Tag Archives: donor engagement

Nonprofit Radio for May 15, 2023: Engagement And Stewardship For Increased Giving & Data Maturity

 

Brenna Holmes & Alyssa AckermanEngagement And Stewardship For Increased Giving

As our #23NTC coverage continues, Brenna Holmes and Alyssa Ackerman deliver systems and ideas that treat your donors right. They help you understand the value of multichannel touches that move the needle on donor retention and value. They’re from Mission Wired.

 

 

 

 

Joanne JanData Maturity

Also from #23NTC, how data strategy and practices impact your ability to meet your mission. Plus a free resource to gauge your data maturity. Joanne Jan is from data.org.

 

 

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[00:01:43.26] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of dextrose inclination if I saw that you missed this week’s show engagement and stewardship for increased giving. As our 23 NTC coverage continues, Brenna Homes and Alyssa Ackerman deliver systems and ideas that treat your donors right? They help you understand the value of multi channel touches that move the needle on donor retention and value. They’re both from mission wired and data maturity. Also from 23 NTC. How data strategy and practices impact your ability to meet your mission? Plus a free resource to gauge your data maturity. Joanne Jan is from data dot org. Antonis take to it is what it is is what I made it. No, no, we’re done with that. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is engagement and stewardship for increased giving.

[00:01:49.59] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage. Of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference

[00:01:57.42] spk_0:
where we are sponsored by Heller

[00:02:12.89] spk_1:
consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. It’s my pleasure to welcome back Brenna Homes and to welcome Alyssa Ackerman to nonprofit radio. Brenna is principal and senior vice president of Mission Wired and Alyssa is senior account director also at Mission Wired Brenna. Welcome back.

[00:02:25.08] spk_2:
Welcome.

[00:02:48.80] spk_1:
Thank you very much. Your topic this year, engagement and stewardship tactics that drive increased giving, writing the fundraising track. I’m sure part of fundraising track. Correct, Brennan, why don’t you kick us off? Just kind of give us a 30,000 ft view of wide. You believe that we need this session 23

[00:03:21.36] spk_2:
N D C. Um I mean, fundraising is harder and harder nowadays, right? It’s a very competitive market. There’s a lot of organizations out there vying for donor dollars. Um And while new generations of donors are coming up, the way they respond and the way they give is different from previous generations and then no matter who you are, nobody wants to be treated like an A T M. So building an engagement and stewardship opportunities is we found the best way to you get a donor from a one time giver to a lifetime brand, evangelist,

[00:03:28.30] spk_1:
evangelism, the evangelist for

[00:03:34.22] spk_2:
keeping them engaged, right? All the way through

[00:03:39.95] spk_1:
time. Have you done your session

[00:03:42.88] spk_2:
yesterday

[00:03:50.55] spk_1:
about how that went and what questions arose from that? Let’s see, I mean, I have your three learning objectives that were stated in the official document for your, for your session. Where would you like to start the topic? Where, where did you begin

[00:04:16.63] spk_3:
the session? Yeah, I think that it’s important to give an overview of why engagement is important as well as how it fits into the overall fundraising strategy. So yeah, I think a lot of organizations often time struggle with the balance and for us to be able to share the value of engagement.

[00:04:27.31] spk_1:
I want you to talk about it like you

[00:04:42.72] spk_3:
talked about it. So there is a strong value behind engagement and stewardship tactics. So you’re really building that relationship with your donor and potential donor. And by doing that, you’re building a case for support and they’re able to make their own decisions to give and quicker. So when you’re asking them to make that gift after an engagement, there’s little decision to be made because you’ve already helped prime and pave that path for them to make the easy choice to give, talking

[00:04:59.68] spk_1:
about giving, not just first time but

[00:05:08.81] spk_3:
any time. And we want to always try to lessen the time between the 1st and 2nd gift, get people to be giving at different levels. Um And so it’s not just about that first time donor and moving them down the marketing funnel, but also retaining those donors and moving them in their donor journey. Okay.

[00:05:24.86] spk_1:
So why don’t we stick with you kick us off with the first, we’re going to do engagement before we’re going to get the stewardship of the first engagement strategy.

[00:06:02.78] spk_3:
Yeah. So um engagement is really important in the beginning of a donor, potential donors journey. So thinking about um different ways to welcome an onboard. So someone who might have signed up for email, let’s get them into a automated welcome series. That’s explaining what the organization does, how they can make an impact, stay connected. And then when they get out of that series, get that first Baskin. So they’ve already taken the action of becoming a subscriber, but let’s get them to take that next step quickly, but also set expectations of how we’re going to be communicating, why we’re communicating. So really that onboarding is important to set the stage for how they are going to be included in the organization.

[00:06:23.07] spk_1:
How long does this welcome series last?

[00:06:57.78] spk_3:
So typically, um welcome series last could last 10 to 3 weeks having multiple touch points. It’s important, it’s important that when they are in a welcome series though, that you’re being mindful of other communication that’s going out. And so oftentimes, my recommendation is to suppress from other correspondents going out. So it’s very clear, concise and they’re on this track, they’ve been primed, they understand the organization and the communication stream and then get them into your normal cadence of communication. Um And it’s really about your organization. So you should test there’s not one prescribed timeline for a welcome series. And so based on your content and your audience, it might be shorter or longer, but it’s really important to test that

[00:07:45.73] spk_1:
out. You suggested that a part of that is informing them how you’re going to be communicating. Is that, is that really asking how do you want to be communicated or, or saying you’ll hear from us every three days for the next three weeks? I understand it would be, I understand this is not a template that everybody applies. You’re in the next 48 hours, there will be no communications after that. So, but how do you say to what degree are you informing them? How you’ll be communicating?

[00:08:44.86] spk_3:
Yeah. Again, I think it’s dependent upon your organization. I am a big believer in, in uh asking that question of what are you interested in? How do you want to hear from us? But sometimes if your system isn’t set up to actually do that or set those um standards of if you only want a newsletter, but we don’t have our system set up to only send you a news. Let’s not ask that. But we can be general to say you’ll be hearing from us and you’ll get newsletters, important updates. If you’ve given your cell phone number, you’ll be getting SMS messages from us. So you can be vague. But the big thing is you need to follow through on that. So if you’re asking how they want to be communicated to

[00:08:51.31] spk_1:
tell you. Okay. All right. How about you? What else about engagement before we get to stewardship? Yeah,

[00:09:39.62] spk_2:
definitely. So, I mean, engagement can mean many things to many people, right? And it really is in the digital space which is a lot of what we were talking about, um getting them to engage with content. So take an action, click something that is measurable in some way. Um Alyssa talked about onboarding, but we can take that even further throughout, you know, quizzes and surveys, getting their own preferences, even, you know, obviously action alerts for advocacy organizations, getting people to take action in a, in a more impactful way um and giving them feedback on what that impact is, is really critical. So depending on the organization, it’s a beautiful consultant answer, right? It depends, um you’re asking them to volunteer, asking them that they’re interested in these other opportunities to further bond them with the organization because whether it is engagement or stewardship or, you know, thinking of them as synonyms. It is about how they engage to stay bonded to the organization or become bonded in the first place.

[00:10:06.31] spk_1:
And there’s value in all these individual steps.

[00:10:07.38] spk_2:
There is definitely and some organizations can actually put a monetary value to them, right? Like they need this number of many signatures for this petition to take this to Congress or, you know, that sort of thing and some of it is a little bit more. Just feel good to calculate how folks are responding to the brand, whether it’s recognition and sentiment kind of things,

[00:11:13.73] spk_1:
any other strategies or tactics around engagement even beyond. So we, we’ve talked about the welcome series right? So now we’ve gone beyond the welcome series. Anything more. I mean, I guess we’re leading toward Alyssa. You had suggested a first gift or maybe, maybe, maybe the welcome series came after the after the first gift. So now we’re looking for a second gift. But the welcome series just to be clear, I mean, it could have come after some other action, right? A signature on a petition. I don’t know if you’re sophisticated enough, maybe a comment on a on a comment on a social post if you’ve got that kind of connection. But okay, so it doesn’t have

[00:11:14.76] spk_3:
to be so it could be, you know, an email subscriber, a new donor

[00:11:21.20] spk_1:
list,

[00:11:34.18] spk_3:
a new sustainer perhaps. Um or if you have like mid level giving or major giving, if someone’s made a mid level gift, they should have a unique onboarding experience as well. Um But beyond welcome series, as Brennan mentioned, having surveys and petitions to really bond and then that’s really focused in digital. But there are many opportunities in direct mail that can complement these as well.

[00:12:32.45] spk_2:
Surveys and petitions are a mainstay in direct mail, right? So those engage devices again, that’s the term that’s used in direct response for eras and eras is to get people to feel their impact beyond writing the check or making the gift. Um And you should be doing that. One of the things we focused on in the session was doing that on a recurring basis. So working, having the fundraising team either build them themselves as part of a comprehensive communications calendar or work collaboratively with a marketing communications team that may be already producing this type of more educational or quote unquote programmatic content so that it’s not just month 13 fundraising appeals and nothing else, we really want to make sure that the donor or prospective donor is having the opportunity to learn and engage with the organization in various ways. Okay.

[00:12:52.84] spk_1:
Okay. So anything else on engagement before we moved to? No, don’t hold out on non profit radio. I mean, what else did you share in your session?

[00:13:09.85] spk_2:
I feel like we touched on a lot of it. I mean, Alyssa talked about tactical opportunities to with whether it’s S M S or even like auto calls, voice recordings, things like that. Um And engagement and stewardship. Can

[00:13:13.80] spk_1:
people still people still react positively to

[00:14:19.92] spk_2:
the auto call? They do. I mean, we forget that our smartphones are actually phones oftentimes, right? Not just supercomputers in our pocket and getting a recorded message that is a human, sometimes even a volunteer or another donor from an organization that is thanking somebody, for instance, for their gift or giving them an opportunity to come to an event um or just saying, go online and check out this latest case that we just wrote this expose on again, depending on the organization is a really fantastic way to break through the clutter of somebody’s inbox, somebody’s direct mail, you know, actual mailbox. Um and technology now allows us to go straight to voicemail. So you don’t even necessary. Yes, ringlets, voicemail. Um and you don’t even have to, you know, have somebody answer the phone and it makes it feels very authentic for a recipient to just see. Oh, I have a missed call. Listen to the voicemail. It’s not a robo call, write personal

[00:14:35.80] spk_3:
messages. You don’t have to listen to the voicemail. You can see it written out in your transcript. And so, you know, that even is great. I like that is, you can see it there. It’s all written out, it’s emphasized. And if I want to listen to it, I can and I hear that real voice. But if I’m on the move and I don’t want to listen, it’s all written. How

[00:14:47.87] spk_1:
do we access ringlets voicemail as you’re calling the number. How do you do it? So,

[00:15:05.07] spk_2:
yeah, there’s third party partners um that work that offer these services um much like a telemarketing firm, but instead of the live callers, you are accessing a dashboard where your staff or volunteers can log in record a voice message. Um sometimes you can even record it just right on your iphone or whatever and then email the file over to the vendor um and then upload a list of phone numbers and the auto dialer spins amount. The vendor knows

[00:15:50.25] spk_1:
how to not make the phone ring. Exactly. Damn. Alright. Ringlets, voicemail. Okay. Very interesting. Okay. But again, I like the emphasis that these are personal calls. It’s not a, it’s not a, it’s not a robocall, it’s personal, you know, Brenna Alyssa, thanks so much. You sign that last petition a couple weeks ago and maybe the person says, um, and, and, and we’re so grateful.

[00:15:54.77] spk_2:
It is if you don’t have the time to do an old fashioned. Thank a Thon, right? This is a way that you can still give that personal touch and a very cost effective way.

[00:16:09.01] spk_1:
Um Okay, engagement. Have we exhausted?

[00:16:12.28] spk_2:
I mean, I guess that’s kind of stewardship to, right? So saying thank you. So kind of going back and forth.

[00:16:30.58] spk_1:
That’s true because we did say thank you. Right. Okay. Um But yeah, we want to keep folks engaged in your point early on. We don’t want to treat them like a T M. All right. All right. Um Anything else? So let’s move more formally to stewardship. Okay. What are your recommendations so we can increase, giving anybody?

[00:16:58.90] spk_3:
Yeah, I think that, um, one you need to make sure you have an auto responder set up for any action to say thank you. It’s very simple and it goes a long way and you need to be specific about what you’re saying. Thank you for. And so is it thank you for taking action. Is it? Thank you for making a gift. These things are important to take that kind of mass communication. And again, bring it to more of a personalized level and so digitally can have those auto responders for direct mail. I don’t think the written note is dead. It still makes an impact.

[00:17:27.55] spk_1:
It’s handwritten huge. I can’t emphasize enough uh fan of handwritten notes. They’re short, it’s not an 8.5 by 11 inch page that you feel you have to full, you have to fill their and nobody does them and they’re personalized and it’s somebody’s somebody’s hand handwriting. There

[00:18:02.83] spk_2:
are few organizations doing them but they stand out that hardly anybody, literally nobody. So that’s what we want. We want folks to kind of, it feels like going back to basics, but it really is just thinking about how would you as a donor, how would you want to be treated? How would you want to be recognized by an organization? Um And then thinking about what are the little things that you can do before?

[00:18:32.17] spk_1:
I want to emphasize the handwritten note. And then if you’re writing the folks, I’d say roughly maybe 60 65 over, don’t be surprised if you get a handwritten note back. Thanking you for your hand for thanking the time I’ve gotten scores of these giving everybody. I work with all the donors pretty much 55 over thanking you for taking the time to send a handwritten note. Thanking you for that. Thanks for your thank you. And they’re doing it another handwritten note back, especially folks in their seventies and eighties and nineties. Some of the donors I work with, that’s what they grew up with handwriting and postage note. So, absolutely. I mean, and also your mail is not junk mail to the folks that are giving to you, you know, an acquisition campaign that’s different. But we’re not talking about that for your, for your donors. Your mail is not your U S mail is not junk

[00:19:38.95] spk_2:
mail. Yes, people are touched and the generational giving studies that are coming out now too is saying it’s not just our elders in the United States that are feeling that way. Millennials respond to direct mail as well. They may not have checkbooks in the house. So you have to give them other ways to respond. Um But it stands out, we don’t get a lot of mail. Um And you know, it’s so having something, we talked a lot yesterday about the having a Q R code that is now ubiquitous, right? Silver lining of the global pandemic. But everybody knows how to use them. Do you remember Q

[00:19:46.98] spk_1:
R codes? They, I don’t know, eight or 10 years ago you’d see them on like a bus. And I thought, oh, these are brilliant and they didn’t take off them. What do we know what happened? 10 years? And if my timing is off,

[00:20:05.88] spk_2:
it was even older than that, actually, I remember them coming out really? In 2003. How come they didn’t take off then? Because each phone it wasn’t native in the operating system. And so if you recall, you had to download a specific app per code. So every company that was pushing these products or trying to get you to use their QR code platform to separate proprietary app reader that then had to be downloaded. So that’s a bridge too far for most of us.

[00:20:32.98] spk_1:
So every code could be a different, a different provider. I there was competition among them

[00:20:36.95] spk_2:
so we have to have the technology catch up. And thankfully now any operating system on any phone, has it native within the camera app. So you’re not asking the user to navigate their

[00:20:51.30] spk_1:
way proprietary app for our, for the company that provided our code. Alright. Yeah, I know it’s now native but I didn’t know why I thank you for explaining why they, why they died so many years ago. I thought this is a brilliant, okay, cool. Thank you for feeling that I’ve always had. Yeah. Now they’re right now they’re ubiquitous.

[00:21:53.24] spk_0:
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[00:21:58.73] spk_1:
Okay, millennials. Gen Z, no checkbooks in the house most likely, but give him a code, the

[00:22:49.47] spk_2:
donation page and like integrating that whether it’s donation page or you know, connecting from against stewardship pieces, newsletters. Um Calendar, people still really love having excuse me, um A wall calendar with beautiful photos to hang up year round and having Q R code there with various calls to actions to learn more about the very programs. You know that Q R code can of course take you to the website and specific pages designed, but it can also take you directly to youtube where you can watch videos. It can take you to a lot of other native apps on your phone that supporters already have and use and engage with on their own that then further your impact story.

[00:22:50.45] spk_1:
People react well to calendars December calendar for the next

[00:23:00.75] spk_2:
year, 100%. I mean, sometimes they’re even more than 12 months, right? So you’re sending them out uh summertime planning for the next year. Yeah,

[00:23:06.16] spk_3:
and all sizes.

[00:23:08.25] spk_1:
So like refrigerator magnets, calendars

[00:23:14.91] spk_2:
are magnetized nowadays. So that makes it harder.

[00:23:26.07] spk_1:
Stainless steel ones. I don’t even know. I don’t have a, I have a stainless steel stove, dishwasher but, but I never had magnets anyway. So I wouldn’t because I think that looks like clutter, clutter in my kitchen. Stainless steel magnetized.

[00:23:35.14] spk_2:
Obviously, I don’t know all of them, but on mine at home it’s just the sides that are magnetized. Interesting.

[00:23:41.49] spk_1:
Alright. Alright. So maybe maybe not the refrigerator anymore but people do like like

[00:23:46.06] spk_2:
wall calendar

[00:23:51.39] spk_3:
even with people moving, working from home and not necessarily working in an office where you’re hanging it up. Still want it interesting.

[00:23:56.54] spk_1:
Okay, cool. All right. So some of the some of the old school stuff is not dead. We’re talking about male, we’re talking about phone calls, we’re talking about handwritten notes,

[00:24:05.58] spk_3:
calendars. You can’t assume you can’t assume that these things aren’t going to work. And so you really need to know what your constituents right now. We go

[00:24:16.72] spk_1:
back to testing trying try a 12 month calendar, maybe there’s a is there a code on every month or something? And then we know right. We know how many of those, which months and how often we know we send 5000 calendars and if we get 1200 hits on a cure, is that, is that

[00:24:36.63] spk_2:
good? Well,

[00:24:42.85] spk_1:
alright, 5000 calendars times 12 month, 60,000 codes, but we only get 1200 I don’t know, but it depends what they lead to. It

[00:24:54.01] spk_2:
does tell you a lot about what your supporters are interested in. Um So if September,

[00:25:00.51] spk_1:
September, what the hell did we, what did we link to in September that everybody loved to volunteer opportunity was something related to the month of September month.

[00:25:11.39] spk_2:
It’s what was happening the world. Yeah, media. Yeah. All the things. So, and I mean, that’s what we have to think about from an engagement and stewardship and lifetime retention standpoint is it’s not just necessarily the bottom line L T V per donor, but it is how these supporters are engaging with the brand, the organization more broadly so that they stay engaged for the long term. Otherwise you don’t have planned giving prospects,

[00:25:56.91] spk_1:
right? My friend is so smooth. Didn’t even, I didn’t have, I didn’t have to give, I didn’t have to have to lay that out. All right. Thank you very much. Um These are awesome uh ideas you can implement for your program. So we’ve talked about a ton of ideas. Anything else that old school, new school stewardship,

[00:26:17.55] spk_3:
I think to part of engagement and stewardship is information sharing. So if something is happening in your organization, making sure that that’s shared and that can be seen as stewardship also because they’re in the know and they feel important and connected. And so thinking about content your organization already has or is planning to disseminate in other ways package it up as stewardship or engagement. So everything doesn’t have to be brand new just for this.

[00:26:35.76] spk_1:
What makes me think of is if you have insider communications, maybe it’s from donors at a certain level. Can you expand that circle? And you’re not diluting the content? You’re not, you’re not diminishing what you’re $10,000 donors get. If you start giving it to your $2500 donors, your $10,000 donors are still getting it. It’s not like a zero sum, right? So

[00:26:58.81] spk_3:
can you

[00:27:02.04] spk_1:
expand the circle so that so that more folks are considered insiders? It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt the existing insiders to bring more folks in. Repurpose the content, expand the content. I always think about that around and giving donors insider communications or events for your major donors. Why not invite your giving

[00:27:22.90] spk_2:
folks as well? I mean, we think about that similarly with sustain Ear’s. Um can I

[00:27:28.31] spk_1:
until they drop off? Yeah,

[00:29:10.69] spk_2:
I think, I hope we’re well past the like set it and forget it, don’t wake the bear mentality and you know, some things like the proposed Microsoft regulations from last year to will kind of shocked the industry in to having to be better stewards of these really important donors. Um and on the Microsoft. Sure. So I mean, we got a little bit of a reprieve. So, but it’s basically surrounding data privacy rules and allowing the donor themselves or from Microsoft’s point of view, the consumer to, to have a right to adjust their own information, have a right to change um what they want to change without having to jump through a lot of hoops. So Microsoft was not Microsoft, I keep saying Microsoft Mastercard, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. That’s not good. Radio, Mastercard, the credit card processing is was going is requiring for for profit e commerce, things like that, that there’s a lot more of the automation and receding that happens for subscription services, right? It’s kind of the Netflix vacation of our lives where we all have so many different monthly subscription services um that we sometimes forget which ones were actually actively subscribed to, but our cards are being charged regularly out and consumer debt is skyrocketing. Mastercard was trying to also extend that out to subscription giving for nonprofits. So sustainer programs. I did sign up for a second sustaining gift to one organization because I had forgotten which one

[00:29:33.92] spk_3:
it didn’t make organizations think about what our process is that

[00:29:39.48] spk_2:
it was a really long time getting there. But

[00:29:43.67] spk_1:
because an explanation, that’s something I never called it Microsoft in the beginning, I would have known exactly what you’re referring to. I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know that. That’s

[00:30:18.81] spk_2:
okay. So, uh the T N P A which is a wonderful nonprofit advocacy focused organization, the nonprofit nonprofit alliance. Yes, that’s all it is. Um fought and lobbied on behalf of the industry to have nonprofits be forgiven for these rules or not, not have to be held to the same standards that commercial companies like Netflix and others are because sustained charitable giving is different. People are signing up for it like you said, for a reason and they don’t forget about it quite as often as

[00:30:37.12] spk_1:
they would.

[00:30:40.10] spk_2:
Like I said, I am, I am an example. The

[00:30:44.89] spk_3:
whole selling point is you don’t have to think about it. You’re giving to an organization you care about and don’t worry about it. We got it.

[00:33:08.53] spk_2:
There is some benefit to the efficiency, certainly, but I think we do have to move past that. Um And, and not be scared to empower our sustain ear’s um with some D I Y functionality online if they want to change the amount or the date that their gift is processed. A lot of systems nowadays are allowing for it, but the nonprofits still have to go in and activate those modules and customize that ui that user interface so that donors understand where to go, what to do and also where the humans are when they need extra help to do whatever. So we got a reprieve temporarily or potentially temporarily. But I think what hopefully what this does and how we’ve been working with our clients is a little bit of a wake up call that it shouldn’t be seen as a reprimand. It should be seen as a stewardship opportunity because you’re sustain ear’s are generally 100 plus dollar annual donors. And if they gave that gift at a one time gift level, you’d be treating them differently. They would be part of a pipeline strategy. Um And, and so we need to not only, like I said, empower them to take some ownership over their own giving, but integrate them into, you know, the rest of the communication and stewardship programs that you already have in place for donors of, of that value and higher potential value. We were just looking at an organization’s um stats just recently that a one time donor online acquired donor, which most sustainer zar is online acquired um had an average 24 month LTV of $86 which is pretty good. 24 months, 24 months, $86 sustain urz 2 87 right? So huge difference um that you theoretically don’t have to do much for, right? Um But if they’re, if they’re falling off, um and not, not being stewarded up that pipeline of giving, it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the potential that may

[00:33:13.25] spk_1:
hold just going back to the mastercard rules. Was it just wasn’t that charities have to start informing the monthly sustain that there’s a dashboard or something that they can go to.

[00:34:09.47] spk_2:
So, not necessarily, you have to make it available. There was a few different, was a four or five different bullet lists that you had to do or bullet items to do. One was having easy accessible like links and all your emails to a place where they could cancel or change their, their gift and or be in contact with within a very short period of time, which was subjective with a human who could then help them through that. Another was uh email notification before the gift was charged on a monthly basis, which actually felt quite was probably the most arduous thing that Mastercard was asking for because most systems are set up to set the auto responder after the charge, not pre charge. So there would have to be some configuration and new content developed to have that year

[00:34:38.20] spk_1:
after one said, thank you, you will be charged in another 30 days that had to be within a certain time of the charge might have been like 24 or 48 hours. But yeah, thank you very much. And you will be charged in another 29 days, right? I

[00:34:40.37] spk_2:
like that. All

[00:34:49.99] spk_1:
right. All right. Um Okay. But yeah, I just wanted to get that little little detail about what the requirement was. Your bigger point was that there’s value in these folks see this as a stewardship opportunity, not a, not a reprimand.

[00:35:19.89] spk_2:
Exactly. And I mean, I think a lot of stuff you’re hearing at the conference to around data privacy. Um and donor choice is going to kind of follow suit here where we, we have to build systems that empower the donors to take ownership over their own giving trajectory. Um And sometimes it is our corporate partners and regulations that nudge us and sometimes we can stand up and do it ourselves

[00:35:23.81] spk_1:
and don’t be afraid to talk to your sustaining donors. Never. Don’t. Let’s not, hopefully, you know, we’re not only over the set it and forget it, but we’re also over the, if I talk to them, they might, they might change their mind,

[00:35:38.42] spk_2:
scarcity

[00:35:39.17] spk_1:
mindset, they’re gonna take that gift away if I remind them that they’re doing it every month. No, no, no. So see, there’s an opportunity

[00:35:45.54] spk_3:
afraid

[00:35:46.11] spk_1:
of, you’re afraid to talk to

[00:35:49.79] spk_3:
these folks if you’re engaging in store them, if they do make the decision that they can’t continue being a recurring donor, hopefully, they still will make that one time gift or they’ll sign up for advocacy or volunteer or planned giving is that they’re still fully engaged with your mission and organization. So you’re not losing them completely. They’re just shifting how they can support.

[00:36:35.11] spk_2:
Situational changes, certainly will affect that, right? And especially some sustainer Czar only giving three or $5 a month. Um and things like inflation and a tightening economy might affect if they can temporary, you know, if they need to temporarily pause that sustaining gift, um If the system allows them to do that themselves, amazing, if not making sure they, you know, who to contact. So that how they can do it and keeping that open line of communication so that they know they can also come back is really important to, again, building that brand affinity and bonding them to the organization so that they say good things about you out in the world.

[00:37:13.18] spk_1:
Oh, this is awesome. Um Great ideas coming, I’ll be very interested in if that Mastercard rule takes effect in the sort of the data, the outcomes, you know, do we see, do we see a lot of sustain ear’s dropping off? My optimistic self thinks that we won’t see that happen. A lot that a lot of people are going to abandon it just because their remote, that they could, but I’ll be interested in the data, but maybe the rule will never. So where does it stand now? With the Master card? It’s not, it doesn’t apply to non profits now and we don’t know if or when it will

[00:37:26.70] spk_2:
change their mind. And they

[00:37:29.09] spk_1:
didn’t say like December 31st is it

[00:37:31.21] spk_2:
is a temporary but no deadline waiver?

[00:37:36.26] spk_1:
Okay, perfect. Okay. Um I’m looking at your learning objectives that were stated in the official and 10 document for this session. Um Ideas with dozens. If you have, I think listeners, you have to go back and replay this. We play this episode to capture all the ideas we talked about. Um understand the value of multi channel touches that increase retention and value what we’ve talked about multi, we’ve talked about all kinds of channels. Uh What else can we talk about that you talked

[00:39:59.74] spk_2:
about yesterday. So we touched on it with the welcome series, right? In the automation. One of the things that I said yesterday and I firmly believe is that we should be leveraging automation more than we do in the digital space. Uh There is so much still like manual labor happening in email, launches SMS, launches advertising and things like that building audiences that is unnecessary. If we take a step back and take a little bit of time to kind of assess the lay of the land first and build out campaign goals, priorities and tactics and strategies. You can pretty much pre schedule almost everything online. Uh So you don’t need to be manually sending out three emails a week or, you know, whatever it is your systems, your technology can really do so much work for you. Um And it’s hard for some folks to put their trust in the machines. Um Yeah, to let go and not review every single audience Celtic and every single, you know, test life, want to see a live seed for every single email, you know, those kind of things. Um But there’s so much more opportunity to do that and you can build trigger based behavior based triggered actions, um emails, engagements, things like that, that keep stewarding people on their own timeline. So you don’t have to pull a list of your, you know, almost lapsing donors manually every time if it’s based on the data that lives in the CRM. Um, and you can build these chronic non responder, trigger based behavior based re engagement series. That’s all about when I last engaged. And it’s different from when Alyssa last engaged. Uh, and it is a little set it and forget it though. Of course, you want to check in periodically to make sure nothing’s gone sideways and the content is still relevant and doesn’t feel dated. Um But that would free up fundraisers, marketers, whoever at the nonprofit to think bigger, think newer, think how we can do something differently or what are the things that we wanted to do for so long. But we never feel like we had the bandwidth at the time if we truly allow ourselves to fully leverage the software that we are investing in regularly, um We’ll have so much more time.

[00:40:27.85] spk_1:
Okay. Leverage automation.

[00:41:43.14] spk_3:
Yes, I think another thing yesterday and often times this is a big question of how can I come back to my organization and have them see the value, you know, they’re looking for the up front giving and want fundraising at the forefront to ask donate now, give now. And so with engagement, you can have after actions, but that’s behind the engagement, that’s not at the forefront. So really being able to share with people, the value is important to go back to their organization and say, you know, there needs to be a balance. You need to look at your communication calendar, where is there the give and take that you can have and sharing that while you might not get the gift today. When you make to ask, there’s a stronger case to give their. And so really looking at your unique file and what they actually respond to because there’s some organizations where you can send a fundraising appeal and you get tons of gifts right off the bat and then there’s somewhere you need to sell it a little more and have those touch points before you can make the ask. And so it’s def for everyone, but it’s important to evaluate that before just saying no, we can only give fundraising emails and direct mail appeals.

[00:41:54.24] spk_1:
All right, I’m gonna let you, that was semi inspirational, but it was very tactical too. So I’m gonna let you leave us with an inspirational message about engagement and stewardship and how that leads to increased giving.

[00:42:08.48] spk_3:
Oh, that wasn’t inspirational enough. Okay. Um

[00:42:15.35] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:42:35.52] spk_3:
this is pressure. I think that you, you just have to take that leap of faith with engagement and stewardship and no one is going to say you thanked me too many times. You sent me too much information. Um You shouldn’t be afraid to provide what your organization does and share your mission. That’s what we’re here to do. And so, um, yeah, engage steward and you’ll see, you’ll see the value come back

[00:42:50.32] spk_2:
around, convey that impact and they’ll, they’ll keep giving. Thank you very

[00:42:59.93] spk_1:
much, Brent Holmes, principal and senior Vice President at Mission Wired and Alissa Ackerman, senior account director at Mission Wired. Thanks very much for sharing, energetic and brilliant. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T. See where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with us.

[00:44:38.14] spk_0:
It’s time for tony steak too. Hi there. Who can you share non profit radio with? I would be grateful if you could identify one or two folks that would benefit from the smart guests that I’m picking the brains of each week for all our listeners in small and midsize nonprofits. Maybe it’s someone you work with, someone you used to work with. Maybe it’s a board member. Who do you know that you could share non profit radio with? Let them know it’s your favorite abdominal podcast. So I would be grateful if you could share non profit radio. Love to have more folks learning from all our smart savvy guests. That’s what the show is all about. Passing on expertise and wisdom. Thanks very much. Thanks for thinking about that. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time here is data maturity.

[00:44:47.31] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. It’s day two at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver

[00:44:57.48] spk_0:
where we are sponsored

[00:44:59.15] spk_1:
by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me now is Joanne Jan. She is project manager of strategic

[00:45:11.35] spk_0:
partnerships at data dot org.

[00:45:14.61] spk_1:
Welcome to nonprofit radio, Joanne. Thank you,

[00:45:16.56] spk_4:
tony. Happy to be here.

[00:45:17.58] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure to have you.

[00:45:18.51] spk_0:
Thank you. And your

[00:45:28.69] spk_1:
session topic is, is data maturity, the key to meeting your mission. It’s question mark. All right, give us the 30,000 ft view of why this is important.

[00:47:14.45] spk_4:
Absolutely. So when data dot org is thinking about data maturity, we think about it in um three different ways, a specific framework we call the three PS purpose practice in people. And what we have designed based on this framework is a data maturity assessment, which is a way to understand where you think your organization is in terms of its data maturity. And we hope that you use the assessment as a communication tool to understand with other colleagues, perhaps your leadership, perhaps born members to think about what do you want to do next in terms of improving the way you use data more effectively? And um how do you use it better to meet your mission? What is data maturity? Yeah. And so there are a lot of different terms out there that um can encompass data maturity. But the way we think about it is again, in the three piece So when we think about purpose, we think about why are you collecting data? What are you intending it to do? Are you intending it to help you inform future decisions? Are you helping it? Are you intending to collect it to help you inform past um past programming or are you informing it or collecting it to inform um uh what you think could be right now, informing decision making right now in terms of the second P which is practice, this is what, how are you going to actually use the data? How are you gonna use it to achieve what you’re looking for? Um So this is thinking about data analysis, data visualization, um the way you’re using and working with that data. And then the third piece we think is probably one of the most important ones is the people. So thinking about who is actually doing this data collection, the analysis, the visualization, who at the leadership level is promoting and prioritizing data. And then there are the culture. So what is your culture around data as a team? Are you constantly collecting and analyzing data together using it to inform decisions um that type of uh culture?

[00:47:38.72] spk_1:
Okay. And the question is, is this the key to meeting, meeting your mission? So ah how does how does data maturity contribute to mission accomplishment?

[00:48:24.27] spk_4:
Yeah. So I think the way we think about it is it’s a way to be more effective, be more efficient and be more impactful in the way that you are carrying out your programmatic objectives. So um when we think about our data maturity journey, you can be at a different part of the journey depending on where your organization is. And perhaps if you’re earlier on in the journey, data collection might not be of primary focus. But as you’re moving along, as you’re developing more um understanding and knowledge and that talent and data, you might want to use it a little more and drive your specific decision making or practices in that way. Um And so the reason it’s a question that said students really thinking about where your organization is and thinking about what can I do now to um maximize the use of data that I as an organization and probably already collecting. So what am I doing now with the, with the data that I have on hand and thinking about in the future? Do I want to shift my practice is in any way, shift my people in any way or my purpose to make it a little more efficient, a little more effective? Um a little more impactful.

[00:48:53.98] spk_1:
Um You have some tools and resources. You mentioned the data, you mentioned data assessment. Yes. Is that, is that at data

[00:49:17.04] spk_4:
dot org? It is um data dot org is an organization that is a platform for partnerships to build the field of data, for social impact and we do it in the three CS. So the first one is the three CS, easy to remember.

[00:49:18.65] spk_1:
Three.

[00:49:40.85] spk_4:
No, I think that’s it. So the three C’s Cases Capacities, comments Cases, you’re really thinking about lifting up practitioners, nonprofits, social impact organizations that are already doing great work with data or data science. And we post those stories, we share their stories on our digital platform. The second one is Cases Capacity. So thinking about how do

[00:49:47.52] spk_1:
you do,

[00:50:44.61] spk_4:
you can only go from the capacity. So thinking about um how do you increase the capacities of individual practitioners and also organizations? And we do this in a few different ways. One of them being perhaps if an organization needs some technical assistance, we can match, make them with um different consultants or other organizations that do this type of work. Uh Thinking about upscaling organizations. So helping them become more um literate in data or developing a new skill. Um And then our third seat is commons, which is where the data maturity assessment falls in and comments is thinking about different digital public goods that you can offer for free for anyone to access. Um that is open source. Uh And that it um can help you improve your practice in some way. So we have an initiative called reverse at data dot org, which is what’s the name of

[00:50:45.62] spk_1:
the initiative divers?

[00:51:24.29] spk_4:
Okay. So that initiative was thinking about creating open source tools for epidemiology. And so if you have coders if you have public health professionals, everyone’s coming together from different roles and aspects and creating tools that would be helpful for um other people. So maybe a local government in a different country might want to look at these open source tools and helps them predict uh the way a pandemic might spread, predict a number of hospital beds you might need based on um different elements of their, of what has already happened. So putting things together and creating those tools and different packages that you can take and apply to different scenarios and context. So there is just one

[00:51:33.22] spk_1:
example of,

[00:51:34.32] spk_4:
of a comment of

[00:51:35.31] spk_1:
a of a commons,

[00:51:47.41] spk_4:
but the one I focus on is the data maturity assessment. And in addition to that, it’s connected to what we call the resource library. So there are a lot of different resources on our library that can help you figure out what you want to do next. So the way our assessment works is it gives you an overall score and a score for the three PS as well as subcategories. And with that, you get resources matched up to how you’re responding. And so say you’re scoring really high

[00:52:10.29] spk_1:
before we go to that, before we go to the outcome of the assessment, where where do folks find the assessment at data dot org?

[00:52:11.38] spk_4:
So data dot org slash DM A

[00:52:28.08] spk_1:
data management assessment assessment, maturity assessment, data dot org slash D M A. OK. Very well named, easily named. So then the outcome is we get, we get resources allied with our outcomes around the three PS.

[00:52:55.04] spk_4:
Yeah. So if you’re scoring a little lower and strategy, which is subcategory in purpose, you might want to check out our, our strategy guide, which is a step by step process that you, you might want to take your team through and think about okay, what is the data were already collecting? What do we want the data to help us inform in terms of decisions or in terms of team makeup or whatever? And then thinking about okay, what’s our over arching strategy and how do we communicate that with our team? So we’re all moving in the same direction. What do we need

[00:53:03.40] spk_1:
to know entering the assessment? Like is this something I can do in 15 minutes? Yes. So do I can I ceo do it or do I need my I T vendor with me or what?

[00:53:57.65] spk_4:
That’s a great question. And so the assessment you can do in about 10 to 12 minutes, it does not matter what role you’re in. Anyone in your organization can take it an important caveat. Is this is your perspective on your organization’s use of data. So this is not gonna be the objective assessment of how your organization is using data. It’s your perspective on it. And the way we encourage users to use the tool is to use it as a communication tool. So say I take it and then tony, you take it, but our scores are different. That’s okay. The whole point of it is to help you understand and have a conversation about why did you score maybe five in this category? But I scored eight, is it because of the role I’m in? Is it because we interpreted the question perhaps a little differently? And then once we’re aligned, then we can think about okay, we’re aligned on where each subcategory falls. And it seems like we both understand that maybe security is something we want to work more closely on because we agree that that is something that we don’t have the proper protocols and practices in place or that’s something we want to improve. So let’s work together on that and think about how do we improve that a little more?

[00:54:31.10] spk_1:
Um without our listeners having the advantage of having taken their uh data maturity assessment, how can we help folks? I mean, are there maybe there are some of the resources or tools that are commonly needed and helpful? How can how can we help listeners with their data maturity before they take their assessment because they’re just listening

[00:55:20.56] spk_4:
now? Yes. Well, so if you’re interested in exploring the resource library, we have a lot of different tools on it. But what I would recommend and what we recommend for those who are just starting their day to maturity journey is to think about strategy. So, data dot org has a specific guide for strategy in the resource library and you can think about, okay, where is my organization now? And how do I enact and write up a strategy with my team in order to use data more effectively, to better understand how data is coming in and what you could uh think about in the long term and future, what you want to do with the data.

[00:55:23.52] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. What else was in your session that we haven’t talked about

[00:55:36.09] spk_4:
yet? So unfortunately, my co presenter couldn’t be here. But another part of our session was thinking about um you’re using data but how you’re using it in equitable ways. So equitable, cultivating Ecuador practices for data for social impact. Um and the organization that was part of this presentation was the Data for Social Impact Initiative at the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in ST Louis,

[00:55:58.24] spk_1:
took four layers to get there.

[00:56:26.87] spk_4:
All right, I have to make sure I take a lot of pauses during that. And so what they’ve done is they created a course module. So it’s free and open to anyone to use and it’s thinking about data for social impact. So if you as an individual or thinking, you know, I want to learn a little bit more about data, I want to learn, you know, perhaps in my role, how you can use it better, just some foundational knowledge, this free and open courses, something you can access um at the Data for Social Impact Initiative at the Social Policy Institute website.

[00:56:44.36] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Um How about questions that came from your, from your session? Uh What kind of questions did you get or anything that’s stuck with you? Maybe a provocative question around

[00:58:42.39] spk_4:
data. Yeah, I think um a question, one of the first questions we got was thinking about the word assessment and how that lands with people. So R D M A is called the data maturity assessment. And thinking about maybe assessment is not the right um word because it does have a certain connotation that you’re being evaluated. And the real purpose of the D M A is to help you set a um an understanding of what you think your organization is. So it’s not necessarily a value to it evaluative, it’s more of a um a snapshot of where you are. And so a suggestion was perhaps benchmarking is a little more um is a little more friendly or a little more descriptive of what it actually is. Um So that was really interesting question and useful feedback. Um I’m trying to think of others. I think an interesting piece about the data maturity assessment is that we um are global organizations. So we encourage wherever you are in the in the world to take it. And we’ve had um a lot of different countries represented in our dataset, which is over 1000 submissions at this point. So it helps us understand the field of data for social impact a little better. Um It’s a relatively emerging field. We’re still learning about it and the fact that we can have a larger pool data sets, we can better understand perhaps where there needs to be more support in the fields, um where there needs to be more funding in the field. Um Something that data dot org releases every year is, is a report on thought leadership. And our first report was work first wanted and thinking about what is the current talent landscape of this sector right now? And how do we train more purpose driven data professionals uh and bring some people over from the private sector, encourage new talent to get into data for social impact because we believe that data is going to be a huge um indicator whether or not your organization is going to be successful. What’s,

[00:58:47.62] spk_1:
what’s I guess I I really have kind of a neophyte question. So, but you’ve been your your data professional scientist and I’ve been studying this for about 16 minutes. So,

[00:58:58.10] spk_4:
well, I’m not a data scientist. I am. Yeah. Well,

[00:59:16.15] spk_1:
your title, your title is Project Manager, Strategic Partnerships. I’m sorry, you sound like a data scientist but you’re not. No, I’m not. Okay. Um Well, you have been working with this for a long time. Um What’s the value of knowing where we are in our data journey as an organization? Why, why, why is this important?

[01:00:54.28] spk_4:
Yeah. So I think, well, we hear a lot from organizations is everyone is collecting and consuming data regardless of whether or not you have a strategy in place. And so when you want to make a decision, perhaps you’re having a challenge at your organization and you think maybe buying software technology is going to solve everything. Um What we often hear is that making that big financial investment didn’t actually solve everything. It created more problems. And our hypothesis is that because there was no strategy in the first place, there was no overarching reason why um the decision to make an investment in some technology or software would help you achieve your overarching goals, which was, which is usually in some sort of programmatic objectives, your outcomes that you want your organization to achieve. And so it’s understanding what data are we collecting, what is our infrastructure, what tools do we already used and how do we make them all work in the same direction? How do we make it all work? So we’re going towards and working towards our programmatic objectives and something that we’re learning more and more is that data can help you be more efficient. It can help you understand the different trends in perhaps the different constituents you’re serving or the trends in um whatever your mission, maybe it can help you get more information and oftentimes you have this information, but it’s thinking about how do you um look at it. How do you analyze it in a way that can drive maybe financial decisions you’re making, maybe cultural decisions, you’re making leadership decisions. Um and this is just one data point. So thinking about the different types of data you’re collecting uh and helping you make as informed a decision as possible.

[01:01:21.88] spk_1:
Okay. Alright. So helping with strategic direction, obviously meeting mission um strategic

[01:01:24.96] spk_4:
planning. Yeah, talent decisions. If you want to hire who you want to hire, what skill sets you need, etcetera. Okay.

[01:01:32.28] spk_1:
How do we leave it there? All right. All right. So a big part of this is encouraging folks to do the data management assessment.

[01:01:41.57] spk_4:
Majority, maturity,

[01:02:01.46] spk_1:
maturity, dammit, I’m sorry, data maturity assessment, which you will find at data dot org slash D M A. She is Joanne Jan project manager of strategic partnerships at data dot org. Joanne, thank you very much and thanks for carrying the, the uh the other part of the other part of your session to for your co presenter who couldn’t be here. Thank you for representing that as well. And thank you for being with non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits

[01:03:07.70] spk_0:
next week, multigenerational technology teaching and goals aligned with technology. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

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[00:01:36.34] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me, I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of a fraser because I cannot bring myself to say the words you missed this week’s show 2023 fundraising outlook one causes research study includes insights to help you benchmark plan, prioritize and improve your nonprofits fundraising this year from one cause Sarah Sebastian and Steve Lauch talk us through on tony stake to webinars galore Here is 2023 fundraising outlook. It’s a pleasure to welcome to non profit radio steve Lauch and Sarah Sebastian both from one cause steve Lauch is director of product marketing at one cause where he brings 17 years of experience in automotive, retail, customer relationship management and marketing technology. Sarah Sebastian at one causes Director of corporate communications. She’s a marketer with eight years of experience in the nonprofit tech space. The company is at one cause and at one cause dot com steve Sarah welcome to non profit radio

[00:01:44.96] spk_1:
Good to be here with you Tony,

[00:01:46.85] spk_2:
thank you. It’s great to be here talking to you today, appreciate

[00:01:50.18] spk_0:
It. Pleasure to have both of you. Thank you and we’re talking about the 2023 fundraising outlook. Who’s the best person to talk about an overview of of this, of the study

[00:02:03.86] spk_2:
definitely.

[00:02:04.58] spk_0:
Okay, it’s unanimous

[00:02:25.75] spk_1:
dive in on that I mean this whole project has been such a great partnership with Sarah but as far as going back to the survey that that fuels the study, um, this, this was, I’d say I can dive in on that. So this is really the fifth year of developing the study into the size that it has been at one cause and the third year of releasing the data in such a way that it is served up in the annual fundraising outlook report. So getting some really great research in a rear view mirror and we’re excited to come out again this year with this report. Maybe to give a little bit more color as to what this report is about and how it works. Um,

[00:02:53.28] spk_0:
we kick

[00:02:53.88] spk_1:
it off every year tony at our annual conference. So the one cause raised conference and spends about a month in market where nonprofits are engaging and responding to the survey and this particular year, 890 nonprofits raise their hands and said, hey, we want to weigh in on this. So 890 voices from nonprofits,

[00:03:16.43] spk_0:
Let’s just call it 900,

[00:03:18.41] spk_1:
900

[00:03:20.48] spk_0:
900,

[00:03:52.42] spk_1:
900 all shapes, all sizes, all segments. We even did some really cool cross tabulation. Looking at annual operating revenue. I’m sure we’ll talk about that at some level. But you know, every year we ask ourselves as well, tony are we, are we getting the right voices. Are we getting the right um, inputs so that we’re capturing all the right information that is helpful to nonprofits and this year in particular, nearly 30% were executive directors, 31% Deb director Development VPs had a great voice from event directors and marketing professionals. So we really are getting the right voices. In fact, 81% of those who responded are involved in making a technology decision. They may even be the ones pulling the trigger on deciding how we’re going to move forward in the next year with technology to help drive our nonprofit mission. And a lot of that goes to fundraising as we’ll talk about.

[00:04:43.56] spk_0:
I also appreciate that the population is very much in line with with our listeners. You know, small and midsize shops. I see 48% have revenue of a million dollars or less. Annual, annual, your, your annual operating revenue a million dollars or less and 31%. So a third basically 350,000 or less.

[00:04:59.16] spk_1:
It is so important to to have the representation of that beautiful bride call at this broad base of the nonprofit world that is just those who are maybe just getting started in their garage or their bedroom or wherever they happen to be. But they have a passion for their mission and maybe those that are starting to add more and more volunteers. Perhaps that 1st, 2nd or third full time employee. But whatever it is, it is that beautiful broad base of the nonprofit world that we’re looking at

[00:06:15.87] spk_0:
11% were all volunteer. So just like a 10th or don’t even have full time employees. And I saw 49% have 10 full time employees or fewer, though perfectly in line with with our listeners. Now there are, there are large organizations represented over $50 million dollars in revenue. Um, if there are any of those folks listening, uh, let me know and I’ll shout you out because I bet I bet the list is small. Most of the vast, vast majority, vast, vast, overwhelming majority of our listeners are in small and mid size shop. So those are those who were, I’m channeling. Um, let’s define this. It was a little unusual to me the A. O. R. Which I look at as album oriented rock, but that’s because I work up, I was raised on rock and roll. So, but that’s not what you mean by a. O our annual operating revenue. So I mean is that annual budget sarah? Is that, is that annual budget or is that something different? What’s annual operating revenue? Because you segment by by this A. O. R. So it’s important for us to understand,

[00:06:45.95] spk_2:
so annual operating revenue, how much money folks are bringing in and then when we touch on budget, how much obviously they’re able to spend for the year. And I think some of the stuff that you just touched on and you’re talking about, like the volunteer numbers and everything that’s really going to come out when we get into some of the challenges. Some of those smaller organizations with uh, the smaller annual operating revenues are really going to be, um, feeling a little bit of a pinch in some of these areas that will take a look at. So I think it will definitely be some good data for the audience at home right now.

[00:06:59.70] spk_0:
Is it fair to just call? Not, I’m not going to change the term on you, but is it fair to call annual operating revenue? Like just annual fundraising revenue?

[00:07:08.94] spk_2:
Absolutely.

[00:07:09.64] spk_0:
It’s the fundraising revenue. Okay. Okay. Report calls it the uh annual operating revenue.

[00:07:16.56] spk_2:
Alright. Yeah.

[00:07:49.81] spk_0:
Okay. Um, so let’s dive in a bit. I see uh I see some challenges facing non profits of of all sizes really that this was, this was kind of interesting to me. Um, the the challenges that are rated sort of critical critical are definitely a concern. I mean they cut across all the, all the all the the annual operating revenue segments like donor engagement, all all all five of your segments, all six of your segments rate donor engagement as a, as a, as a top five problem. And donor fatigue shows up in five of the six categories. What do we do? What do we know about donor donor issues?

[00:09:13.98] spk_2:
Sure. So things things have Changed a lot since the last study. So the challenges that were related to planning around the pandemic dropped significantly because those were at the top of the list in the past couple of years surveys, but don’t get us wrong, like we’re not saying it’s not a challenge anymore. It’s obviously still a challenge, 71% reported that planning related to the pandemic was still challenging for them, But it dropped from number one to number 10 in the list. And those donor-related challenges that you just mentioned, those are coming back to the top. People are starting to feel a little bit of relief and they’re able to shift back to donor engagement worrying about hair. We fatiguing our donors with all of this messaging and everything that they’ve been through over the past few years and donor retention is coming back up into that top four to um recurring giving was something we saw that came out as a top challenge as well. And for the view of challenges that you’ll see in the report first where everything’s kind of rated, it was folks who rated items as critical, definitely a concern or somewhat a problem. And that’s where we came up with that donor engagement, donor fatigue, the recurring giving and donor retention were all there in the top four. So things have changed a lot steve, did you have anything like a little bit of color from the past or anything about like varying sizes? How that differed?

[00:09:31.07] spk_1:
Well, let’s start, let’s start with sizes. And then I think there is something to be learned as we look longitudinal e over the study over the past few years. But as we looked at non profits of varying sizes again by that annual operating revenue marker. Uh, that donut retention really fell into, became notable in the top two places for orders that were a million dollars A. O. R. And above. And then

[00:09:48.43] spk_0:
excuse

[00:10:15.24] spk_1:
me looking at the top three places really tony for most of the market. So we’ll call that the 350,000. 0. R. All the way up the scale. Um, recurring giving was something that became very much apparent in that. And, and I’ll say real quick, um, as your audience accesses this report and downloads it, there’s a, there’s a lot of data right in this one question and becomes v very visibly and visually better understood when you kind of see it, how we’ve laid it out. So I know we’re throwing a lot of numbers, a lot of information, but boy donor fatigue was definitely the top voiced concern that made it into the top five concerns for every segment every strata of the nonprofit nonprofit world. Um, what’s interesting about that for me

[00:10:41.49] spk_0:
though,

[00:11:03.24] spk_1:
is that while retention has a number, we can put on it. Um, while recurring giving has a number that we put on it, fatigue is a lot more of a perception metric. And uh, it’s, it’s interesting to me that, that, that had such important placed on that particular metric as you look at the data. Now, I’ll also say really quickly we saw staff turnover work its way into the top five challenges, especially as you kind of go up and that was for

[00:11:16.48] spk_0:
the larger staff turnover was

[00:11:18.39] spk_1:
you got it. Yeah,

[00:11:20.21] spk_0:
Over $50 million. They’ve got hundreds of employees

[00:11:24.88] spk_1:
well. And look what happened over the last two years. Right. I mean

[00:11:27.50] spk_0:
things talk

[00:11:54.70] spk_1:
about upset the apple cart, right. And that, that large organization perhaps felt the, the need for agility more and the need for finding out how do we get through this and with such a large staff, it’s just, it was, it was an unfortunate story. We don’t have to dwell on here today. The good news is that, um, is that those nonprofits are working through those challenges. I’ll also add that acquisition and management sponsors and sponsorships also is a challenge that we’ve tracked year over year every year, every year these last few years. And that has surfaced for a number of the segments of nonprofits. So there’s some other, there’s some other color there. But sarah, I’m sure you would agree having released the report yourself. It’s far more visually understood for, for those who can access this and download the report. Yeah,

[00:13:14.30] spk_2:
I agree. There are a lot of ways to look at, especially the challenges, um, by breaking it down by revenue level and looking at what’s critical are definitely a concern compared to having like the somewhat important mixed in there as well. But I do kind of want to touch on that donor fatigue because we have been hearing a lot about it and tony I don’t know if you’ve heard this throughout your career to that there’s, there’s been kind of a historical disconnect between nonprofits and donors when it comes to donor fatigue. I’ve done a few studies at various companies in the past where nonprofits said one thing they thought they were really fatiguing their donors and donors are like, no, you’re not. We want to hear more from you. But I think what it comes down to that’s important here is that you have to remember that the communications that you are sending out, if they’re engaging, they’re worthwhile, they’re giving something to your donor, then they’re not going to be fatigued. I know around like holiday giving season, even on linkedin. And I noticed there were a lot of folks popping on that consultant saying, I got this many emails from this, these nonprofits. It’s too many emails and only enough. A couple of donors popped and they were like, oh, I like getting those emails. They told me what was happening. Like how much they were raising from there giving Tuesday campaigns, etcetera. So as long as you’re giving them something that they want to hear. I think they’re going to stay engaged. They’re not going to get fatigued. Have you heard anything about that,

[00:13:53.67] spk_0:
uh, from some guests? Yes. Um, let’s first, let’s use this opportunity to remind folks or let them know where they can get the get the study because it’s, it’s very visually engaging as both of you have said. So. One cause dot com. And then where do we go after that?

[00:13:57.83] spk_2:
Sure. It’s one cause dot com backslash research. And you’ll find the study there. There are a lot of other resources on our website as well as well as past reports. So if you want to dig in and compare to past reports as well, they’re on that site.

[00:14:56.34] spk_0:
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Um, All right. So this idea of the fatigue, you know, as as steve said, it’s it’s a perception. It’s it’s not something measurable, but it’s, it’s a perception internally. Right in in everybody’s office. What do you, what do you think is, what do you think is causing this idea that we’re fatiguing our donors where Sarah you’re saying they actually want more. And I’ve heard that also, I’ve heard that especially among among and about boards members that, you know, we’re giving our board members too much. No, actually, they want more because they’re your key volunteers. And they the fear is that you’re giving them too much. Um, so I’ve heard it in that respect, but we don’t have to, you know, we have to stick to board. I know that’s not your, that’s not the study, but that’s, that’s where I’ve heard it even even more? What do you think is causing this belief that we’re fatiguing folks

[00:15:24.30] spk_2:
right current state. I honestly think we all feel fatigued after going through a pandemic, going through you know political ups and downs. We’re still in this big mindset of uncertainty and I know everybody has heard that word 1000 times but it’s still there and it’s just making everyone feel very unsettled and very tired. So I think sometimes that just kind of bleeds over into our everyday interactions

[00:15:28.65] spk_0:
were contributing to it. Yeah we

[00:15:31.08] spk_2:
must be doing it too. We must be adding onto the pile but

[00:15:34.18] spk_0:
we see it we feel it we must be contributing to it because we send mail and email. Alright.

[00:15:39.80] spk_1:
tony I think I think I want to

[00:15:42.53] spk_0:
don’t be so hard on yourself basically.

[00:15:55.78] spk_1:
I want to jump in here real quick. I do wanna I do want to suggest here at this point that fatigue is a it’s a complex metric to unpack. It is not as simple. I mean I think we could probably spend the next hour kind of um in a conjecture of sorts of how to unpack this. But fatigue comes because as Sarah said it’s something we feel elsewhere. And so we translate that to I’m sending one emails to emails, five emails ergo my donor base must be fatigued.

[00:16:21.53] spk_0:
And

[00:16:42.39] spk_1:
when we actually look at the data as Sarah has said. In fact some of the great reports that we have available at one? Cause dot com actually give you the perspective of the donor as is our research done every spring. So this is the nonprofit voice every fall compare that to what’s going on in the spring with what donors are saying? Yes, they want the communication. I want to see those emails in my inbox and if I open up one or two of the five, it’s okay. I’ve heard from you and I can digest that you are not asking too much of me. You are not giving too much to me. It is not the fatigue level that perhaps we are putting on on our shoulders ourselves.

[00:17:04.36] spk_0:
Sarah, you have many years in your background with ford motor company, right? Oh, that’s steve I

[00:17:13.54] spk_1:
carry, you know, you mentioned that in the intro. I carry a good number of years in the automotive retail technology side. Um, and six years now or coming up on six years in the nonprofit world. Two very different worlds. But yes, go ahead. tony on.

[00:17:28.74] spk_0:
Do you know, does, does, does the ford motor company worry about fatiguing? It’s uh, potential customers like do they worry about sending too much buying too many ads? Sending too many messages to folks who have signed up? Does the ford motor company? Uh, do they worry about things like that?

[00:18:22.10] spk_1:
I would say in general, the automotive world perhaps. Um, let me say this first. Any good marketer understands the sensitivity around sending the right message at the right time to the right audience for the right response. Any good marketers, there are perhaps markets in our ecosystem in the world that are more sensitive to doing that and there are perhaps markets that are less sensitive to doing that. I do find that the automotive world sends a good number of emails and there perhaps, maybe those what you’re getting at, not as worried about fatiguing me at least as a recipient. So I’ll let you put a bow on that where you were headed. But

[00:18:53.72] spk_0:
No, that was it. I just, that was, that was my suspicion. But you know, I don’t talk to, uh, Fortune 100 folks, um, ever or even. So I was seeing it in your background. Uh, I was just curious about it. Um, let’s talk some about events. What Sarah, can you talk about, what, what, what is planned and I see more more hybrid being planned. Can you flush that out for us?

[00:19:51.24] spk_2:
Sure. I think if we start with a little bit of an overview from 2022, it’s a helpful kind of foundation. Um, so in 2020 to 95% of nonprofits who took this survey said that they held at least one online camp, 93% said they held at least one event in 2022. So vast majority of nonprofits there and that makes up the bulk of quite a few nonprofits fundraising budget, their revenue for the year. So 56% said that they raise 21% or more of their annual fundraising revenue from online and event fundraising. And an additional quarter of those nonprofits said that they raised 41% or more of their annual fundraising budget from event and online fundraising. So it’s huge. It’s very important. Um, and looking back at 2022, as far as how supporters participated in events, I think Steve Do you want to touch on that data for me?

[00:19:59.61] spk_1:
Sure, Sure, Absolutely. Yeah. This was really great to see tony So we asked these nonprofits, how did your supporters participate in your 2022 events and then followed up with how many of the following fundraising events do you plan to hold in 2023. So we have to look back, we have to look forward and again

[00:20:20.61] spk_0:
for

[00:20:47.57] spk_1:
Context, this question was asked an end market with the survey in September so nonprofits were giving us a good view into most of the year to 2022, but they were forecasting into 2023, still sitting in their third quarter of the year. So with that in mind, looking back in 2020 to 32% of nonprofits held in person only events. Now, just I let that just sit for a

[00:20:51.21] spk_0:
second and

[00:21:52.57] spk_1:
We look back in the rear view mirror a year or two and to consider how we were in 2020, early 2021. No way were one in three only having in person events. So what a great comeback in 2020-1 half of nonprofits, 56% did. In fact, as you said earlier, Tony Lean to that hybrid side, which is fantastic. So let me fill the blanks on the, on the rest here and I’ll come back to the hybrid 9% only virtual 4% no events at all. And for various reasons, I’m sure. But over 50% hybrid tells me a couple of things. You add the only in person and the 56% hybrid together and you have a mass of the, of the nonprofit world that is back in the ballroom. But so much of that is, is uh, an event that is in consideration of that virtual audience. So we learned from the last three years, we learned that people want to engage with with us differently. And so while we’re back in the ballroom, we’re not going to forget that virtual audience, we’re gonna include them. It may be for the whole event. It may not be for the whole event. It may just be for the appeal. It may be for other programming that we wanted to share with them. But the Great News is that we are back to the ballroom in 2022. Now that was of course last

[00:22:19.78] spk_0:
year, what

[00:22:31.18] spk_1:
about this year, september people are answering this survey and there’s looking forward and guess how many say we are going to hold an in person event, 83%. Look forward in time and with such confidence and Sarah maybe you can, you can elaborate on this. They’re willing to say that over 80% were absolutely back in the ballroom for at least one in person only event.

[00:22:59.78] spk_2:
Yeah, I think the confidence levels, that was a real takeaway for us. How much they changed confidence levels about in person events just kind of shot through the roof in this year’s survey. Um, nonprofits who said they were undecided about holding those in person events dropped to 8% this year, down from 20% in last year’s survey. So people are feeling really good about heading back to the ballroom. Like Steve said, uh,

[00:23:13.83] spk_0:
I, I saw that golf outings ranked as the number two most common event after after something social. So I’m assuming that’s a gala type event.

[00:23:25.60] spk_2:
Yes. I think that the in person auction events and then

[00:23:28.12] spk_0:
the person, we’re

[00:23:29.27] spk_2:
very successful as well. Yes, absolutely.

[00:23:43.28] spk_0:
Now golf outings and hybrid. I don’t know, can we, I don’t know are they playing like minute, are they playing golf? They have their favorite golf app or they, they’re, they’re in there, they’re in their stroke trainer, you know, maybe it’s videoing them while others are actually playing. I don’t know, can we do a golf outing hybrid.

[00:24:13.74] spk_2:
I have actually seen, I do not remember the name of the software or the company, but there was a virtual golf software that a nonprofit for an event. So I know it’s possible it’s out there. People really made some as we’ve all heard major pivots to, you know, fit the pandemic in our way of life changing. So it’s definitely out there. I’ll have to look into that and see if I can get that over,

[00:26:49.39] spk_0:
you know, the dinner, the dinner or the lunch after. I mean I could see that being a hybrid but I was just wondering about the golf experience itself. I don’t know, maybe golfers are out there with caMS on their GoPro’s on their heads or something. And so you vicariously. Oh, that shot sucked. Oh, you’re terrible camera to somebody else please. You’re awful. It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m talking a lot about planned giving in January and February. I’ve got 15 webinars and podcasts on planned giving uh just in in these like not even the full two months. It’s more like six weeks january and early february. A cornucopia of webinars uh podcast, a prodigious profusion of podcasts. I’ve got coming up lots of content. Um, if you are at all interested in learning about the basics of planned giving, launching, planned giving at your nonprofit then you may very well be interested in this Horn of plenty of content that I’m doing with other folks who are hosting me for webinars and podcasts. You can keep abreast of what I’m doing by following on linkedin or maybe I should say more correctly connecting, connect with me on linkedin. Uh, follow me on twitter. And another way is you could sign up for the nonprofit radio Insider alerts at tony-martignetti dot com because I let folks know um, on that, who, who is hosting me and uh, where you can hear me speak. So if you are interested in launching planned, giving, planned, giving basics, I’m doing a lot of talking about that in january and early february. That is Tony’s take to imagine that We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for 2023 fundraising outlook with Steve and Sarah Sebastian, imagine that data, Let’s talk about data. You’re a data driven type organization and what, what, uh, you had some takeaways about data access.

[00:27:15.32] spk_2:
Yeah, I think this was our surprise, not surprise moment really when we were looking at data because we all know that a lot of nonprofits do struggle with data, whether there’s too much of it or what to do with it. Uh, so we found that making it accessible and actionable just continues to be a concern for nonprofits like, okay, yeah, we know that already. But when we actually saw the numbers, that was kind of the moment where everyone on our team Kind of got slack jawed whenever they heard the stats. Um, so only 18% of non profits who took the survey said that they actually have access to all of the data that they need 18%, that’s

[00:27:26.46] spk_0:
it and

[00:27:35.91] spk_2:
that they use it to make decisions. Um, and of course those smaller nonprofits did report having even less access to the data that they do need. So it’s a bit of a struggle and steve, I think, I know you have something to say,

[00:27:40.78] spk_1:
Oh, I always have something to say

[00:27:43.25] spk_0:
That that’s, that’s dismal. You know, one

[00:27:46.68] spk_1:
in five,

[00:27:47.80] spk_0:
one

[00:27:54.77] spk_1:
in five. Like if you’re sitting down around the table right with five nonprofits and one of them says I have all the data I

[00:27:55.86] spk_0:
need, I

[00:28:04.99] spk_1:
have it in the place where I need it and I have it served up to me in a way that I know what to do with it. Make a good decision. That’s dismal. That’s a great word for it.

[00:28:07.05] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:29:21.91] spk_1:
And then we looked at some other aspects to this tony and okay, if if you do have a lot of data, Then what’s holding you back from using it every day to make meaningful decisions in your fundraising strategy 26%. So again, another like, well in this case, one in four, I suppose roughly so that they don’t have the time to form the insights they have the data, but maybe it’s just it’s just a matter of time. We all get that we, especially your audience, as you said, the smaller nonprofit world is there’s never enough time in the day. So I think there’s an opportunity for us, especially as you said as our data providers, technology providers that, that work off the data serve up data help nonprofits live off data. We need to serve it up in a way that makes sense that it doesn’t take time. Another one that I’ll share another one in five said that they don’t know how to form actionable insights. Okay. So I have the data, but again, it’s, it’s, it’s not and it may even be like right there for me, I don’t even need the time to go dig, you know into it and pull a report and compare and pivot tables and all the, I just don’t even know how to form an actionable insight based on what I’m given. Again, I believe that this is on us and our world to say here is what your auction data is telling you

[00:29:35.32] spk_0:
this is a data literacy issue. Then people not feeling comfortable making conclusions from the data that they do have. Is that isn’t that that data literacy,

[00:31:16.58] spk_2:
I think to some extent it is. But I also think the data can be intimidating just because there’s so much that can be measured and there’s, there are a lot of numbers obviously coming out of fundraising. What do I do with all of this? And I think people, especially non profits, you know, they have big jobs, they’re trying to make the world a better place. They want to do big things. And I think when you’re looking at data, you have to narrow and pick something small first and focus on that. Okay, I’ve got this piece master now I can pick another metric and focus on that. And I guess trying to give an example of that if you have part of your fundraising strategies to boost your recurring revenue this year. Great. Okay, where do I start? What do I do? What data do I look at start by going into your crm and looking at donors from 2022 who gave maybe three or four times. And I use myself as an example for this because this happened to me, I gave I think four or five times two best friend animal at best Friends animal society last year, just throughout the year as I was giving an honor of friends, pets, my pets, etcetera. They called me after running a little campaign and said, Hey, you know, we noticed that you’ve offered ongoing support last year, thank you for these gifts of these amounts. Would you consider becoming a recurring donor at $25 a month? Why not sure I can, I can spare that. Great. And even with just those little incremental increases across a couple of 100 people, you’re boosting your revenue there. Alright, you’ve boosted revenue using this one small metric that you focus in on what can you do next. So start small. Don’t get too overwhelmed to try to find somewhere to start, got to start somewhere.

[00:31:23.02] spk_0:
Let me give you a generous softball shameless self promotion opportunity because we’re talking about data being overwhelming and, and, and uh, like frustrating, how does, uh, how does one cause overcome that?

[00:31:44.28] spk_2:
I

[00:31:44.45] spk_0:
think the great,

[00:32:02.93] spk_1:
the great news is we help in a lot of ways. I mean we help connect nonprofits with more donors. We help that connection be meaningful in a way that it, it truly helps them engage with those donors. And we talked, we talked about donor engagement back when we were looking at that Finding around challenges, Tony Right. And so once we connect with more donors and engage with more donors and do that through a number of different ways to fundraise. That’s one of the things that we found and maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. But I know we’ll talk about priorities for 2023 that nonprofits had told us about.

[00:32:21.12] spk_0:
But looking

[00:33:36.68] spk_1:
at new ways to fundraise to find new donors, acquire new donors and then use that engagement to retain those donors are nonprofits find that they are more highly satisfied with the technology that they acquire that they, that they purchase, that they use every day. And uh, it drives our mission and that’s what it’s all about. I I tell, I’ll give you a little anecdote here. tony but tomorrow and every Tuesday first Tuesday of the month. I help onboard new 11 cost team members that join our company. And I tell them, hey, you’re gonna have its work. You’re gonna have a bad day every now and then. But what we do, even on those bad days, we help make sure that another child is educated, another family is fed. We’re taking two steps closer to just finding that cure. Right? And this is all executed through these amazing nonprofits, all over the nation. How do we get involved with that? Exactly what I shared with you before, helping nonprofits find those donors engage those donors retain those donors and building a wonderful relationship that helps build a better tomorrow. Softball question back at you. Nobody

[00:33:38.05] spk_0:
answered. I was waiting. Yeah, I’m glad you. Thank you for stepping

[00:34:32.11] spk_2:
up. I do have something. I think since I just started talking about focusing on small things, something popped into my head while steve was talking about connecting with more donors. We run a campaign every year called in detectives where companies sign up and fundraise for nonprofits in the Indianapolis area. Um, and we use our peer to peer system for that. So we get in there, we use it, we fundraise for, we would fundraise fundraise for make a Wish Foundation this past year and looking even in just our peer to peer tools, we’re talking about starting small, There are little data points in there. Even for our donors where you can trap how far your social posts are reaching, how far different campaigns are reaching. So even donors can look and see what’s working to get the word out about a campaign and shift their strategies to use that particular social platform or that particular technique. So there are things built in throughout the system to even help donors analyze data, which I think is really interesting and something I haven’t seen with a lot of other fundraising platforms to be honest. So I think there’s something helpful there.

[00:34:45.38] spk_0:
Thank you. Alright, let’s let’s let’s go back to the, to the fundraising outlook. What are their takeaways are there that we haven’t talked about yet that you like to highlight you think are important for small and midsize shops to know the benchmark against.

[00:36:55.44] spk_2:
Sure, I think I would like to touch back on the hybrid fundraising aspect quickly, Quickly calling out again, steve touched on that 56% held hybrid events in 2020 to 32% held in person And looking at 2023 as nonprofits were looking ahead 45% said they were going to be holding hybrid events in 2023, which is really good to hear. Um, those hybrid and in person events were what we saw as most successful budget wise, performing against budget. And when we looked at, um, how they were performing against their budget was 80% who held either an in person or hybrid event reported that they were raising in line or more than their budget for the year. So great. We definitely want to focus on in person and hybrid. But I think Steve touched on this point a little bit The good part about this is that people are listening to donors. He mentioned some earlier research we had done with giving experience study earlier in the year where we get donor perspective on everything. And in that particular report, 56% of event donors said that they wanted some sort of virtual option. So I think that’s something that’s really important for nonprofits of all sizes to listen to, especially the small and midsize shops. We understand that hosting a hybrid event, there’s a lot of work. It’s, it’s tough. We held our race conference was hybrid this last year and it was hard. So definitely empathize with that. And but you’ve got to listen. It’s worth the effort if your donors are telling you this is what they want to give it a shot. Look at that event calendar. See if you can fit in some sort of virtual option in there somewhere. If it’s not on there now because that’s what people are saying they want to do this year. And of course keep an eye on the news because we know we’ve been hearing from here and there. There’s some, some numbers numbers going back up with covid cases, fingers crossed. Of course we don’t want anything to happen. But in the event that it does, It’s good to have that in your back pocket as an option for your donors.

[00:37:03.27] spk_0:
Do you think it’s worth surveying.

[00:37:06.20] spk_2:
Absolutely.

[00:37:26.27] spk_0:
Or do or donors like is everybody going to say I want the hybrid option. But then the fewer people actually sign up for it once it’s offered, everybody wants the option and then we set it up. We spend the money on the production and the platform. And, and then a disappointing number of people actually subscribe to it, join the stream. What do you what do you think? Yeah,

[00:37:46.92] spk_2:
I agree with that. That is kind of a sticking point when planning events as well. But if people have been telling us this is what they want, give it a shot. If it’s a total flop, then, you know, but I do agree that serving finding out what people want to do. Sometimes people are going to say yes and then they change their minds. I mean people change their minds all the time. You never know. But we have had customers who have said when they did offer that virtual option, they even wound up just getting donations from people who couldn’t attend the event in person and didn’t wind up, you know, going the virtual route. So offering that donation option along with that registration could be a possible solution to that as well to make up some of that. If people decide they’re not going to go the virtual route?

[00:38:16.65] spk_0:
I I saw that um, the fundraising, the priorities

[00:38:20.55] spk_2:
looking

[00:38:36.37] spk_0:
Forward are consistent with the challenges. So that’s that’s good. Our our community is aligned with what they see, where they see problems and where they know they have to focus. So 97% of of your respondents said that donor acquisition is going to be a key focus. I mean that, you know, it may as well call it 100% and nine right. If we’re going around 8 92 900 we could certainly around 97 to 100. Um and 96% right is right there to say donor retention is a key focus areas. So it’s gratifying to see that priorities are in line with the

[00:38:58.80] spk_1:
challenges.

[00:39:00.00] spk_0:
We’re rational, we’re all rational.

[00:39:02.17] spk_2:
It makes

[00:39:03.47] spk_0:
sense that the actor, a bunch of rational actors

[00:39:39.41] spk_2:
Um outside of those, I wanted to run through the top priorities really quickly because there’s some interesting differences in how folks rated those. So you touched on the top two. Um, next up was increasing funds from existing campaigns and that was, that was pretty high as well, 93% said that there was a priority and these were ranked as critical or important by folks who responded. Um, then there’s kind of a draft in the rate here, new ways to fundraise came in at about 82%, a little bit above that was operational efficiency and effectiveness at 84 and I find that kind of interesting

[00:39:41.84] spk_0:
because

[00:40:09.51] spk_2:
you know, if you’re focusing on operational efficiency and effectiveness, there’s probably gonna be a little bit more time in your day to focus on donor acquisition and retention. But there’s kind of this vicious cycle and all of these little things that go into that because we just talked about people being short on resources short on time so they can’t get to focusing on the operational efficiency. So I think there’s some work to be done and figuring out how to address all of these challenges and priorities in a way that’s beneficial to everybody and especially for these small and mid sized shops that are struggling with the resources and I know steve and I have talked about new ways to fundraise and how that can help with the donor attention in the acquisition as well as you want to.

[00:40:39.93] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean that’s that’s the diamond in the rough, as far as I’m concerned because we’re looking at it, this is nothing shiny at this point. It’s 82% for new raise to fundraise when we’re looking at 97% for donor acquisition, but it’s very possible that the new ways to fundraise and, and I think what we tend to do tony we tend to imagine the worst possible scenario, right. If I look into a new way to

[00:40:50.59] spk_0:
fundraise, it’s

[00:41:48.03] spk_1:
gonna take loads more time that I don’t have, it’s gonna take a lot more effort that that I just, I’m not ready to give. It’s gonna, it’s gonna expose me to all kinds of distractions. Uh, let’s go back to something, Sarah said, how about we start small? There are there are fundraising platforms available that allow you to break out of just the event type of fundraising And we then elements appear to peer weave in elements of social fundraising. Be able to tie together your online with your event efforts so that perhaps you are able to, by using new ways to fundraise, acquire new donors, retain some of those same donors because you’re doing it in a slightly different way where you might actually engage them differently. So I would, I would encourage your audience to consider. Okay, what is available to me that I might be able to try a slightly different way to fundraise, engage a slightly different audience and in fact, I may end up acquiring those new donors and retaining my current donors at the end of the day. Even better.

[00:42:08.34] spk_0:
All right, what else? We have some good amount of time left. If we, if we like any, any other stuff that uh, we haven’t talked about that you think is important for folks to know anything else from the study? Let me just remind folks you can get it at one cause dot com slash research. It’s the 2023 fundraising outlook.

[00:42:23.94] spk_2:
Perfect. Anything

[00:42:25.35] spk_0:
else?

[00:42:25.65] spk_1:
I’ll add something. Let’s go back. Let’s go back to challenges real quick, just for just for a minute. And

[00:42:32.02] spk_0:
this is gonna

[00:42:33.23] spk_1:
sound, this is gonna sound a little bit perhaps initially on the negative side, but I’m going to try to turn it into a little bit of a sunrise for us and end on something inspirational. Um, I’ve had the privilege of running this survey for I think I said five years now, five or six

[00:42:51.04] spk_0:
years

[00:42:51.97] spk_1:
And one of the things Tony that we do is we take that question around challenges. And we, we talked about this right donor fatigue, donor engagement retention, recurring giving, etc. And, and there are 13 different challenges that we asked non profit respondents to rate individually so we can track those as individual challenges.

[00:43:13.35] spk_0:
We can

[00:43:13.77] spk_1:
also track them as a collective level of challenge that the nonprofit says, hey, this is my

[00:43:20.98] spk_0:
overall

[00:43:22.26] spk_1:
level of challenge this

[00:43:24.49] spk_0:
year.

[00:43:51.86] spk_1:
We take that average across the entire respondent base. We’ll call it 900 and we’ll link that back to what things look like in 2021 and we can compare that average as well to 2020 and a 2019. And what’s really interesting to me. So two points first one again, perhaps on the surface a little negative is that those challenges are getting more intense. The average of those 13 challenges year over year, the relative rating of those challenges is increasing year over year over

[00:44:00.65] spk_2:
year. I

[00:44:02.10] spk_1:
Would have thought initially that 2020 would have been defining the ceiling and perhaps 2021 a little less and 2022 a little less. That’s not the trend. The trend is actually showing more intense challenges for our nonprofits.

[00:44:20.49] spk_0:
The good

[00:44:21.01] spk_1:
news is that we have data like this report and other reports out there that help us focus in on that right step that, that next right step and how to understand that Sarah was saying to find that one metric, maybe it’s around recurring giving, maybe it’s around looking at my, my uh, tech acquisition. Uh, there’s all kinds of things in this report that we’re not obviously covering in in these few minutes, but

[00:44:50.45] spk_0:
take

[00:45:29.16] spk_1:
This report, find that one or two next steps that you can actually move against in 2023 and watch yourself move be pulled out of those challenges in that one area. Are you going to improve every area? Probably not because not one of us can do everything. But the good news is that we have a clear path to make good decisions to see what our peers are doing with through research reports like this, see what the rest of the nonprofit world is doing, where they’re succeeding and we can point our ship there and really look to succeed even if it’s in small ways in 2023. So that’s, that’s probably my, my, my message of hope and inspiration using something as as, uh, as vanilla as data. But boy, it really opens up the opportunity for us to see what we need to do next. What step we want to take and where we can make progress in the next year.

[00:45:48.63] spk_0:
Anything that sounds like, you know the way one cause hopes that you will use their 20, fundraising outlook. Sarah, what would you like to leave this with?

[00:46:58.64] spk_2:
I kind of wanted to touch on steve mentioned tech acquisition and there’s something in the report about shifts in nonprofit technology investment. I would love for people to kind of look at the particular chart for that. I think about it. I’m looking at it right now on my other monitor actually and there are 36% of nonprofits saying that they’re going to invest more in marketing automation. So that’s kind of in line with, you know, the donor acquisition piece we were talking about in the challenges etcetera. And I’m interested to see, you know, what is the R. O. I. On this once this year happens? How do people use it? Was it effective for them? Did they feel like they had enough training? Were they able to use it? Because I don’t really want people to fall into that hole of, here’s the data and now I don’t know what to do with it. So I’m interested to see if there are enough resources out there for folks related to that marketing automation. Are they getting the training? They need to know how to use it effectively. Um I’m just interested to see next year’s results I guess is what I’m trying to say, but I do kind of want to echo steve’s message. I I want nonprofits to know they’re not Lonely islands. There are other nonprofits out there who are obviously facing similar challenges and looking for solutions. Talk to other nonprofits, talk to your peers, uh something that may have worked for them, may work for you, something that works for, you may work for them. So really rely on your community to talk through solutions that you’ve been working through and share the wealth of those ideas because we’re all in it for the same reason and that’s to make lives better for everyone. So definitely share the knowledge.

[00:47:29.48] spk_0:
Alright, messages of hope and inspiration

[00:47:33.08] spk_2:
from

[00:47:34.25] spk_0:
from two directors at one Cause Sarah Sebastian Director of corporate communications steve Lauch, Director of product marketing. The company is at one cause and at one Cause dot com, The report is the 2023 fundraising outlook, steve, Sarah Sarah steve, thank you very much. Real pleasure.

[00:47:55.96] spk_1:
Thanks for having us

[00:47:57.13] spk_2:
appreciate it

[00:48:21.15] spk_0:
next week, purchasing pro tips If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%, go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 14, 2016: Unpaid Interns & Social Appreciation

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Gene Takagi: Unpaid Interns

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There’s new law on this and it’s pretty good news for nonprofits that use interns. But there are questions depending where you’re located. Gene Takagi explains the ins-and-outs. He’s our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.

 

 

Amy Sample Ward: Social Appreciation

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We look at social engagement for member appreciation or your donor campaign that doesn’t include an ask. Amy Sample Ward is our social media contributor and CEO of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network. (Originally aired December 12, 2014.)

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tourney martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. My voice is cracked now that uh oh, you know that i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with duodenal atresia if i had to digest the idea that you missed today’s show unpaid interns there’s new law on this and it’s pretty good news for non-profits that use interns, but there are questions depending where you’re located. Jean takagi explains the ins and outs he’s, our legal contributor and principle of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations, law group and social appreciation. We look at social engagement for member appreciation or your donor campaign that doesn’t include an ask amy sample ward is our social media contributor and ceo of n ten, the non-profit technology network that originally aired on december twelve to twenty fourteen on tony’s take two i cracked again to twelve years old, thirteen years old. Oh, tony, say to trump and and tc videos we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee. Fundraisers, we be spelling dot com. Jean takagi is with me. Very glad of that. Glad he’s back. You know him? He’s, the managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits that popular non-profit law block dot com. And he is the american bar association’s twenty six eckstine outstanding. Non-profit lawyer he’s at g tak. Welcome. Outstanding non-profit lawyer. Hey, welcome. Outstanding non-profit radio broadcaster. How are you? I’m great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I don’t know. Have you been live? Yeah, you have. You’ve been live since since you got this outstanding non-profit lawyer award. Yes, once or maybe twice. But yes. So it is not the first that listeners they’re hearing it, but it bears repeating until twenty seventeen and then it’s old news and you’ll have to re apply, i guess. Hey, guess but this is my first time i hit the first lot of your show. So i’m honored. Was this the first time you’re in the first half? Is that right the first time? Oh, ok. That was not intentional. Well, see, these are the perks that come with being the american bar. Association outstanding. Non-profit lawyer during the’s the perks that come with it now twenty seventeen, we’ll be back down in the aisle. Squeeze you into tony’s. Take two. You get a minute and a half. Okay. No, not at all. Not at all. I love having you. You’re our longest running. You know, we’ve talked about this every every every july when there’s an anniversary, the show we talked about this, you’re the longest standing contributor, so by no means denigrate that. All right, we are we are talking about you have unpaid interns. So, um, i want to set the stage a little bit altum in in august, there’s a federal court in new york that applied a new test to dismiss an intern’s lawsuit against the hearst corporation. And just parenthetically, i think he or she is now screwed in that career that they’d better go back to school and major in something different because their their name is dirt in whatever they’re they’re majoring in now. But any case that was august and then there’s a federal court down south in that covers alabama, florida and georgia that applied that same new test uh, which we’re going to get through all this, but but the rest of the country is a little uncertain. So i just want to set the stage for you to explain to us, um what? What is the what is the problem here with non-profits and volunteer interns? Sure. So maybe if i if i take a step back to tony, you know there are employees and there are volunteers, and if your employees, you’re paid in your subject to, like, wage and hour laws and all of the rest, right? So everybody knows that and non-profits especially charitable non-profits often rely on their volunteers very heavily, and volunteers are so so important to so many non-profits, but it becomes a little bit tricky when non-profits decide they want to pay their volunteers. You know what they might call a stipend and it’s really important to determine whether by paying the volunteer, you’ve actually converted them from being a volunteer into a worker who’s paid right, which might typically be an employee. This is when you triggered all the employment, right? This is similar to what you and i have talked about with independent contractors just because you label someone an independent contractor. Or a volunteer or an intern doesn’t make it. So exactly so the legal definition. So, i mean, you know, part of you know what a non-profit might do is if somebody like that person in the hurst case said, hey, you know, you called me an intern or a volunteer, but i’m not on. I actually have gotten some sort of payments. I should be treated as an employee and, you know, the subject, all of deals, employee rights, i should be able to exercise them well, it’s not the label that created. So perhaps they have a case and there was enough of the case, and i think it might have been a class action or just multiple plaintiff sex bob um, in that case, but so labeling them a volunteer or intern, but giving them a payment might make them an employee. And so that’s, what you have to be careful of and the fallback position before all of these new cases, we have some guidance from the federal department of labor, and they just gave us a sixth element tests, and we’re not going to go through them all. But basically the internship experience has got to be for the benefit of the interns and one of the factors and that test is that the employer that provides the training can derive no immediate advantage from the activities of the interns. Yeah, and that’s a really tough criteria to place. So you’re you’re taking on an intern, you’re supposed to train them, you’re not supposed to displace any regular employees that you have, so they’re not just, like, take the role of an employee. It’s got to be for their benefit and in in that department of labor guidance which still serves most of the country the employer khun derive no immediate advantage. So it’s like that the intern can actually benefit your business, right? Not even not even marginally. Now you have the you have the six that are standing throughout big parts of the country and, well, all in detail at non-profit law block dot com. So yeah, why don’t we put in the more references in there? I hid some of them until we do this. I saw that you had your very clever. I really appreciated that you people need to goto non-profit law block dot com if they never have but and go back if you have been. But yes, you said, you know what advice for the future chicken after the show, we’ll add it after the show and you said what’s the current state or, you know, what’s new what’s the new trend checking after the show. So you you kept i love that. Thank you very much for doing that. I was really i wanted to comment, but you had comments blocked you had you don’t allow it. You don’t know your allow free discourse on on your on your block. Did you know that is that it started to become a trend on on that elearning perhaps we could talk about that another day, but we sort of get off track with the comments. Uh, really good political in every oh, jeez. Okay. Okay. I understand. All right, so but i did want to comment, but alright, so, yeah, the the this longstanding department of labor, the six test, the sixth element test, and then the different one is the new one is seven elements yet was very weighted to the in favor of the internet and against the employer. Basically is what i saw in those six yeah, well, it definitely could be read that way. Much of this is the same actually in the new test, but the big difference is that the employer can derive no immediate advantage is not in the news and it’s. More of the new one is, uh, more of a balance versus the old one. Or maybe current in a lot of places. The six elements you had to meet all six. Yeah, versus the new one is a balance. Or were more flexibility. Okay, i think i feel like we’ve done a lot of teasing the listeners we’re going, we’re going to flush it all that, you know, you know, you know what? We’re not gonna let you down, you know that? All right, we got to take our first break, gene. And this is what happens when you’re when you’re in the first segment. There’s early break. But then we get a long stretch together, so stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I feel like doing some live listener love good. Jean, if you will indulge me, let’s, let’s, start abroad and ah, actually, let’s, let’s start in japan. Gene. Gene, you do you speak japanese? Gene schoolauction okay, i guess. I mean, that means a little bit. Okay. Okay. Well, i we say konnichi wa am i? Am i pronouncing that correctly? Like you are very close. Cooney is that better? Yeah, that was better. Okay, um, i exaggerating it or is that good? Well, we’re got it. Okay, thank you very much. Ok. Last time you’re in the first segment. That’s the end. Of course we have listeners from japan, but we can’t see your city today. For some reason, cities are masked and same thing in career we cant do you routinely can see cities but korea? Of course, on your haserot comes ham, nida and mexico city mexico bueno, star days. Glad you’re with me in mexico city. I love mexico city’s very nice. I’ve been through there a couple times norway again we can’t see your city but norway welcome live listen love to you and the philippines philippines live! Listen, are left to you that’s a new one? Do i think i’m not sure you’ve been with us before? Beijing is with us always so gracious multiple in beijing ni hao and also san juan, puerto rico would that be a way to start? Is also a way to start is, of course, san juan wellcome back here in the u, s, brooklyn, new york and new york, new york love it, love it! Brooklyn, new york in new york, new york live! Listen love to you st louis, missouri and garfield, new jersey look at this, i love it! And uh oh, late, late check in changsha, china also? Well, of course you get knee how as well for the doesn’t matter late chicken glad you’re with us in changsha and also las vegas, nevada to get some new ones garfield, new jersey brand new lovett and las vegas. I’m not sure you’ve been with us before, okay, we’re going to do the of course with live listen, i’ve got to have the podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections, but i’m gonna divide them up today. I’m feeling avant garde so those air to come. I never forgot coming. Okay, jean thank you for for hanging in there with me. Well, i get verbose, but it’s thanks. It’s. Gratitude, i think. It’s well placed verbosity. All right. Okay, so we are. We were talking about the difference between the two tests. The longstanding six elements all had to be met versus the newer one. The seven elements more balanced and s o fairer. I thought in my that’s being very subjective but in my opinion seemed fairer and friendlier to employees. Employers sorry, friendly to employers. So, um, let’s let’s talk about the newer because you summarized and again, the details are all a non-profit law block, dot com let’s talk about some details of the newer test that that got applied just in in august. It came from last year, though, right? Yeah, it originated. So for lawyers out out there, i’m probably very few. But the appellate chords sort of determined the law because a different district court might be on different sides of and then the powered court takes it and says, this is what everybody lower than us have to abide by and and the hearst corporation case with the lower court that applied the new tests that came from the second circuit, which includes new york, connecticut in vermont. So that’s, the appellate court that covers all those three states, they came down with a case called glad versus fox searchlight pictures. And i only bring that up because that’s the black swan case if anybody saw the portman movie oh, yeah, was he was based on an intern claim from from that project. So the second circuit said that hey, the department of labor test that’s not the approach we should use anymore. They actually said the approach we adopt reflects the central feature of the modern internship, which is the relationship between the internship and the interns formal education. And they said no six elements of which all of need to be met. Aziz said before it’s seven factors that were going away and the whole idea behind this is who benefits more the employer or the intern. Okay, so there’s the balance we get, we get the way a bunch of factors and see how how each of them comes out. Is that it? Basically, yeah. And that’s the modern approach not saying the employer can’t derive any benefit, which is the department of labor test, but saying, who benefits more the employer or the intern now, is this, uh, is this an an example for people who think that our courts are activists? Now we’re getting political, i don’t do politics, so we’re not going. I’m not going to give my opinion, but ah, of whether this appropriate or not, but this and this this is basically court made law, right? Because it’s the appellate court superseding a longstanding department of labor so executive branch test yeah, and, you know, the laws are either made by our legislatures or they’re made by our administrative edges agencies, they’re executive agencies, but if the you know legislature, does it there’s a lot of discussion, a lot of lawyers involved the administrative agencies khun do it just like that, right? So they create regulations that fall within the rules, and they’re trying to interpret them and it’s only through the court that we understand how to interpret their regulations and whether there are regulations are actually constitutional are consistent with the loss of this is the balance and check to the regulations and basically here we’re balancing the department of labor’s. Right. To create the tests and say that this is this is what the statute really contemplating. Okay. All right. So one one person’s balance of oven executive. Ah, executive regulations would be another person’s arbitrary lawmaking by courts. So there’s, the there’s, the two sides. And then we leave it there because this is not a political show. Okay, um, activist activist courts. Okay, so let’s, talk about the seventy seven factors in this balancing test. Um, on go. They all start with the extent to which so there’s your balance. You balancing phrase? Glad jean, once you get started. Sure. So the first is that both the intern and the employer clearly understand that there’s no expectation of compensation. So both parties no it’s, a volunteer position. And if there’s a stipend paid, you know, that’s that’s above and beyond what was expected, the expectation is no compensation. Okay? And it is a stipend that is in aa compensation for expenses that are that are paid out by the intern. Is that the stipend? Well, the stipend can actually even be a payment. Well, it could be a reimbursement for what the internist spending on. Their own, like, you know, the even transportation expectation, right? Commuting or the stipend could just be kind of saying, hey, you know, we know you’re working here for free, and we’d actually can’t afford to keep you as an employer, and we’re going to make sure that we fall within the department of labor’s or the court idea of an intern, and we’re going to give you some money. It might be five hundred dollars for the month, for example, and an employee minimum wage would be a lot higher than that. But you’re allowed to give entrance stipends within reason of longer. They really are unpaid interns and under these guidelines yeah. Okay, again, this is one factor out of seven. So a stipend is not going to kill it, but not like the old test where all six elements had to have been met. Correct. Okay. Okay. All right. So cool. All right. So you could give a reasonable stipend, a song that doesn’t look like a salary. Correct. Okay, okay. All right. What else we got there? So we got to that. That the internship actually have to provide training. That’s going to be similar to? The type of educational training that they would get in an educational environment, like, like in the school or in the clinic or something like that. So it’s inside a real life location, working location, but it’s still going to be a training element that’s really important, which makes sense. Okay, in addition to that, it’s got to be tied. The internship has got to be tied to the interns formal education program. So there’s got to be some sort of integrated coursework or the internet’s got to receive academic credit for it. Okay, now this is the second one about the the training similar to that which would be given an educational environment that seems like i don’t know is that? Is that common? I mean, i’m out of the workforce. I mean, i i i’m i’m unemployable, nobody would hire me. I’d be too much. I’d be way too much trouble. Way too many headaches. I’d be a you don’t want me, so i’m out of this. Is that pretty common? Like there is formal training sessions in an internship besides doing the day to day work? Yeah, you know, we would recommend that that be the case. It doesn’t. It doesn’t have to be like every day, and it doesn’t have to be like, you know, five hours of the eight hours that they might work. But there has to be. There should be a training element again. It’s, it’s, it’s. Not absolutely required, it’s part of the balancing test. But having a training programme is a really good tip. Okay. Okay. And then, uh, the extent to which it’s tied to the interns formal education program. So you have that might be, you know more about the class that they’re in. You know, they might write a paper about their experience at the internship. That would be integrated course work. Or they could just receive academic credits. Instead of taking a class or a clinic at school. They might just get credit for serving as an intern at a particular non-profit. Oh, well, that’s. Very common, right? I think the school credit comment. Yeah. That’s ah, it’s something that would be very important. Teo, incorporate. Okay. If you had a client, you would recommend that their interns air getting academic credit for the work they’re doing. Yeah. Or at least having their coursework recognized that they are interning at a particular non-profit and that they’re completing some sort of assignment related to that. Okay, okay. Actually, i said if you had a client, i didn’t mean to suggest that gene takagi sze practice has no clients. That’s, not the case as you are counseling your many, many clients, you would recommend what i just said. Okay, um, all right, let me i mean, i’m going to read one. I feel i feel like meeting, um, the extent to which the internship accommodates the interns academic commitment by corresponding to the to the calendar. So you gotta weave this within. What? What the intern is doing over over at their university. Right? So you don’t want to go. Hey, i know you have a class between nine and three on monday, but we’ve got work needs. You better come out here or you’re gonna lose your job. You can’t do that. Okay. Very bad. Alright, so so the employer really does need to be working with the the academic institution. Whatever is, i mean, it could be a high school, too. I suppose there needs to be a lot of coordination. It seems like yeah. Or the intern has got got to represent what their schedule is, and the employers got to accommodate that. Okay. Okay. Sorry. That’s a good one. All right. Um go ahead. You go. You go now. Okay. What about some pictures? I don’t know. Then the next one is extent to which the internships duration is limited to the period in which they’re receiving this beneficial learning. So you can’t have an intern for five years. Who’s not learning anything beyond the first six months. It’s tied to the learning again. The primary beneficiary is the intern, not the employer. Okay, the duration should be limited. Okay? And should it be limited to the to the academic calendar year like that way? Well, it might be limited depending upon what you’re tying it to see if it’s tied to just one course, it might be limited to that course. It often is limited to the summer in between, you know, the fall and the spring semester. So, it’s, just you want to make sure that they’re learning during that period and it doesn’t look like if i could jump to the next one. I’m going to take your place and let you take the last of it doesn’t displace a paid employees jobs, you’re not just taking a paid employee position and saying, hey, we don’t have an administrative assistant for this program. We really need one, but we can’t afford one what’s hired an intern on ben, train them for two days on howto answer the phone and make copies and then let them work, you know, for a year doing right, right? Right now now if if you were challenged, if the non-profit was challenged, how would it demonstrate that one that it wasn’t displacing an employee? How would you how would you go about defending yourself about that? I think you would say that you know what? We designed an internship program in advance? We did not fill a whole unemployment hole with just somebody that we hired on just called them an intern. There was a training program that we created and established in advance with thoughtfulness to make sure that they’re learning in this program. Andi put them in this position for this limited period of time, i think that’s how you show that it wasn’t intended to displace any employees on its intended to compliment on dh, you know, for their learning. Okay, okay. Cool. All right, you go ahead with last night. You’re the guest, please. Okay, so that the last one seventh factor is extent to which the intern and the employer understand that the internship is conducted without entitlement to a paid job. So it’s not like intern for us for the summer and we will guarantee you are we will strongly consider you for a job in the fall when we’re hiring for full time positions. So as your screening in turns on daz, you’re negotiating whether they’re going to come on or not, you don’t want to be emailing or saying the wrong things. Yeah, and, you know, they might really have a leg up legitimately have a leg up when you’re hiring for a full time position in the fall, because now they have a bunch of experience, but you don’t want that to be the basis, and you don’t want to entitle them to it, so they shouldn’t have the expectation that just because i intern, i’m automatically. I’m going to have this job now. Suppose someone in the organization e mails to the potential intern during the hiring process ah, you we always give our interns preference in employment at the end of the internship. How does that how does that sound to you? Yeah, it sounds like it was the gate. The factors in the balancing test thinks so, yeah, it wouldn’t be a great fact, but by itself, it probably isn’t gonna like kill them. You know that the argument that they’re not ok, but it doesn’t help so better to do things that that help your employer than rather than don’t help or, you know, neutral. So stay away from promises or preferences or anything like that of a job after your internship. Yeah, we want to stress like this is a great learning experience for you, and we’ve designed it to be a learning experience for you that the email you want. Okay, okay, now i’m not sure we made this clear, but i want to that the maybe it’s absurd and everything that we did say so the so these seven factors is balancing test. We know that this would apply in the areas that are covered by the two, the two, the two courts in new york and connecticut and vermont, because that would be a second, that concert like a second circuit. And we know that that they seemed the same. Seven apply in alabama, florida and georgia because that’s the eleven eleven intricate. Which also said that hey, when they considered in a case on appeal, they said that tests the second circuit test. Sounds right toe. Okay, so that’s for those six states that leaves forty four states wear those forty for if you’re not in one of those six. So the best guidance they have is the department of laborers. Six element. Okay, but that still has wide application in every other state. Yes. Okay, but what if a ah, now what supposed case arises in one of those other forty four states and that and the courts in that circuit or state decide we we are also going to take this second circuit seven factor balancing test. And even though you were relying on the department of labor, we are telling our region that it’s the newer test that applies from the second circuit, then the organization will be screwed. Yeah, they might be if there is, there isn’t a higher court in those other states. Those forty for other states. If there isn’t a higher court opinion that says the department of labor test is the one that you have to use, which probably for most jurisdictions, there isn’t that decision. So right? Because so long that was into court to say, hey, we’re going to use the second circuit test tube. This is more modern sounds more fair to us and then it’s upto sort of the higher court to decide whether you know, and they’ll only take it if one of the parties appeals. So, uh, if it’s been non-profit lost on it, and then you know, the lower court said, hey, this is an employee, we use the department of labor standards, the non-profit if it wants to pay a lot of money to go to an appellate court, i could say, hey, we’re going to take it up and fight this and see if your hyre court will say, no, we should apply the second circuit test, too. Mmm. Okay, so i’m feeling bad for the people in. Well, i won’t. I won’t list the forty four states, but like my friends in wyoming and indiana and iowa and let’s, see who? Else is listening live. Wait, let’s. See nevada? Well, listeners, we got listeners in nevada and missouri and no new jersey. New york. You’re covered florida. Oh, monica lee is with us in florida, chicago, illinois. Our friends in illinois. Well, i’ve listened love to each of those places. By the way, what do we tell them? I know you’ve got advice. Yeah. So, you know, this would apply to every whatever job. Okay, this is advice for all fifty. Okay. Oh, even better. I better get a signed writing. First of all that when you hire an unpaid intern that there’s an understanding in writing that this is an unpaid position. And we talked about developing the position as a learning experience ahead of time and then filling it, not the other way around. Throw in some educational sessions during the time that might not be. Might be one a week, for example, where they get, you know, learning it could be a videotape or an online presentation or in person training by supervisors and you, like your supervisors are also paid on the difference. Are also trained on the differences of managing an intern versus managing an employee. Is going to want to do that differently, including on enforcing likes scheduling and accomodating school schedules and emphasizing the education rather than giving them a lot of menial work that didn’t actually result in any academic o our educational benefits. Okay, gene, the intern let’s. Let’s. Go back to the one right before the the educational sessions. You like them to be unrelated to the the interns day to day work. Yeah, well, not unrelated, but they should be separated out. So maybe at the end of the day, there’s an hour and you do this once a week and say, hey, what do we learn from all of our, you know, your work experience today, you know, if it was mechanical, whether it was, you know, counting, background or program management. Like what did you learn that, you know, let’s, you know, write me an essay and let’s discuss it or let’s, just, you know, hash it out. And as the supervisor of the trainer in this case could could tell them what their perspectives are and what they should be looking for, how to help their clients the best so there’s a lot more into it than just sort of doing the practical work. Okay, okay, we have just about a minute and a half left just enough time for the remainder of your advice for doesn’t matter what state you’re in. Sure, so require proof of academic credit eligibility so you don’t have to sort of do it at the back and to make sure that they actually got the academic credit but require that they’re going to be offered academic credit. Okay for the internship. Okay in-kind assess and limit their their operational duties that day to day stuff. That’s really menial again? It doesn’t mean that they can’t make copies and get coffee for you, but if that’s a big part of their job, then you’ve got a problem there. Limit the length of the intern relationship. I think the last thing i want to say is and for foundation president darren walker wrote an opinion in the new york times a few months ago, you know, saying that the internships are not a privilege, and it made a strong case for paying interns and providing a handup and not, you know, treating it as a handout, so if you do that, if you start paying your interns. You’ve got to be careful that you haven’t made them employees, so make sure that you know the department of labor guidelines, and if you’re in one of the second our eleventh circuit’s st make sure you’re familiar with those guys, flint, and we’ll have it up on our block that well, you want to go back? Well, they’re familiar now because we just talked about it in detail. Yeah, okay, but yes, more detail at non-profit law blogged dot com which you should be subscribing to and reading regularly and followed jean on twitter at g attack jean thank you very, very much. Thanks, tony. My pleasure. Pleasure having you in the first segment. Social appreciation coming up with amy sample ward first. Pursuant, they have another free webinar this time it’s on donor acquisition proven techniques to add new names to your file acquisition examples for every budget. And they’ll have strategies to convert mere impressions into new donors. Impressions with your organization this is on thursday, october nineteenth at one o’clock eastern email me tony tony martignetti dot com and i will send you the registration link. And if you can’t make that it will be archived because i know a lot of our affiliate stations may be playing this after thursday, the nineteenth we have you covered, email me again, tony attorney martignetti dot com and i will connect you with the with the archive so you listeners are covered. I got you, i got your back don’t worry about that. Um, that’s pursuant and they are at pursuant dot com to check out that webinar, we’ll be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising these are ideal for bringing millennials into your organizations work not like any other spelling bee you’ve been a part of or you’ve seen check out their video, which includes clips from events, and you’ll see that there’s music and dancing and stand up comedy and fund-raising and spelling as well, ideal millennial events. The video is that we be ea spelling dot com now, tony, take to you may have heard a couple of weeks ago, the trump foundation got punished by the new york attorney general for not being registered before soliciting in the state of new york very bad and i try to make this a teachable moment, so i explained what the requirements are. Um, in my video and i’ve got another video in the same post, which introduces the first group of non-profit technology conference interview videos, i got thirty two interviews and i’ve played a bunch of them on the show there more are coming, but there were all video too, so if you miss them here, you can check the videos or if you’re ah visual person like i tend to be more visual than watch the videos, and they are all on this first group is all on digital digital data disruption, digital inclusion, your modern digital team and digital metrics. Did you see the pattern there? Okay, my videos with links to those four ntcdinosaur o’s are at tony martignetti dot com. I was very pleased with myself. I stayed out of the politics of the trump foundation. I just very straightforward. I think i was very objective there. That’s tony’s take two here’s amy sample ward on social appreciation from the december twelve twenty fourteen show you’re going to hear some live listener love there, you know we’ll send it out. It’s erroneous, but we love you anyway. We got amy sample ward have monitored for being late. But nonetheless, she’s, the ceo of non-profit technology network and ten her most recent coopted book, social change, anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement and we’re going to talk about appreciation and engagement. She blog’s at amy, sample war dot or ge? And on twitter she’s at amy r s ward any without cubine well, you may have heard the west coast had a bit of a storm last night with lots of power outages, so just dealing with getting everything back online. Sorry, that’s okay? I did not hear that i’m sorry. You have you don’t get snow there in portland, oregon. Very much. It was not. No, it was actually very warm and, you know, wind gusts seventy or ninety. Some crazy high speed, actually a piece of building downtown just a few blocks from the intent. Office blew off and crashed through the fifteenth floor windows of a law office while the lawyer was working there. No, it was a very interesting evening. Pieces of a piece of a building flew off. My god, yeah, very unfortunate. Very unfortunate for that building owner that it flew into a law office. Right? They’re prepared to think that only you know, that broken building is screwed. Okay, now i understand you’re, you know you’re like, like all the contributors, your typically early, you’re not even just on time, so i understand completely. Let me ask you about something before we get to our appreciation campaigns. Yeah, and just like in the past four months, i noticed at facebook they spun off their messenger app, and at four square they spun off. They’re a nap called swarm, and i’m wondering why why it is that these huge two huge social sites would spin off two separate aps big chunks of what draws people to them. The facebook it’s the messages message i’m sorry messaging and it’s a four square the whole purpose of four square is checking in, and they spun that checking function off too. A separate app called swarm why do they do those things? I have a few different ideas, probably none of them have any, you know, piece of reality in them, they’re just totally my own experience trust your way, trust your judgment. I mean, i do think that one piece that factors in is the you know we’re all we’re using different act all the time and if i am using facebook to connect and i’m able to kind of multitask inside of their consent messages, i can post things, whatever, and then i leave facebook and i go to some other messaging app to talk to friends. You know, facebook just had fifty percent of my time, but if i’m using facebook to do that, i closed facebook and then i opened my messenger app and start messaging people there. Now facebook has one hundred percent of my time in that example, you know, so it’s providing a way for the app to be it me and focused as possible, but then still own the other nation focused parts that you know you want to do. So instead of having that all in one super multitask kind of after experience, you’re splitting that off into ap, and part of that, too, is that you know, facebook is more of an example of this than four square, but a lot of facebook users in the beginning were all using facebook on their computer where was a lot easier to kind of multitask. Have a chat, you know, send someone a message post on your news feed whatever. Well, now, you know, most people are using facebook on their phone, so it’s it’s much more difficulty to be multitasking inside of a nap. So again, you have multiple app that are all technically rolling up into the same umbrella. So it’s easier from the user’s perspective, i don’t have to import all those new contacts in new app it’s still facebook, but it’s focused on what i’m doing there, okay, that one and then you always have to factor in like, well, how are they? How are they monetizing those ap? Whether the ads, what are they selling? What’s the data they’re able to capture? And if you have multiple apse that are more focused and maybe have different different data pieces that air getting pulled in, then that’s even more opportunity, i see. Ok, and the one thing that does resonate with me eyes the ease of use of the app. The facebook app gets a little it’s a little busy so i could say i had to see that spinning. Okay, see, that is a good reason, but okay, monetization too. And andi, just time, time, time that they want you paying attention. To their they’re brand okay, yeah. I mean, if you want to think about the four square example, i mean, when we first started using foursquare, it was you could check in somewhere. I am here. You know, you could see where your friends were, and then they really started in and encouraging users to leave tips and post recommendations, and then they rolled out some features that we’re trying to see where you were and then ping you and say, hey, is this where you are? What if you do this thing here, you know, and have offers and promotions? So it became came. It became a little busy, right? So it made sense been off that other piece that’s more the recommendations and the where to go and where your favorite places. Because now that’s almost like competing with yelp, you know, give them a second app. That’s more in competition with maybe app. Those users are already, you know, have installed on their phone right and system apart a bit from that. Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you for those insights. I find myself actually checking in a lot fewer. A lot less often now with the with the separate swarm app that’s that’s me. I don’t know, i have no idea what the statistics are, but i just thought, you know, i don’t feel like i haven’t even used it since that which happened interesting. I mean, i had a very boring foursquare news feed in which i only checked in an airport, so i did, you know, i used to only see you at airports that’s, right? I just thought you were just there all the time. Okay, well, it was a way of saying, hi, i’ve come to new york was around or i’ve come teo wherever. All right. Thank you. Let’s talk about appreciating our donors and maybe and volunteers and maybe even employees through the through the social networks. We don’t always have to be asking for something, right? I don’t think that we have to be asking for something. And i also think that really great. Ah, really great. Thank you. A really great sign of appreciation will be met with eagerness to give again or to volunteer again or two, you know, come again, wherever it was that you were an event, etcetera. So i think, you know, i have worked with people and organizations where it felt like if we’re not including an ass, you know, we can’t necessarily devote the staff time and energy to put on appeal together on dh, you know, i get that if you’re really strapped, there’s only three of us, you know, we have to make this happen, but i really think that taking that time to just say thank you really goes so much further in building that relationship, which we want to talk about fund-raising a special, especially individual fund-raising that’s really that’s really the peace, right, it’s building that relationship, you know? I don’t know that you could sure maybe you don’t mail something out that is a hard cost of male and all those thank you letters, you know, but i think there’s got to be a way, especially with social media, where it can be so much more quick and nimble to say thank you and make it feel really good. So maybe for twenty fifteen, we can plan an appreciation campaign. Yeah, let’s do it. Okay? And you have a bunch of examples we’ll get to talk about some of the examples, but what? You know this true of probably any campaign that were we’ve talked about in the past, but what do you think we should be thinking about as we plan our let’s make it what is most likely a donor volunteer appreciation campaign, napor which would be, what do we have in mind? So one thing that i think we need to have in mind is the timing of when we say thank you, i think often we always think, okay, well, we’re going to ask people for money. It’s december, right now, you know, so say everybody’s got their end of your appeals, and then when someone donates and it goes into the database, they get their confirmation email and it says, thank you, and we made sure that it was a really nice thank you letter, but it’s a confirmation email and it says thank you and we feel great because they got think i also think there’s a lot of opportunity to have said thank you before that ask went out if we if it’s december it’s the end of the calendar year, right, what if november or even that very beginning of december is when you make sure everybody that’s already donated, donated in the year or maybe donated last december or volunteered so far this year came to one of your events this year. Whatever it is, it’s important to you is a monthly member, whatever they get thanked for what they’ve already done. So when they received that end of year, ask they feel like, oh, i’ve already been recognized. Maybe i do want to give a little bit more. Or maybe i do want to come to the end of your, you know, gala, whatever it is, i think that that’s really important and some thing i don’t often see organizations do say thank you. First on dh then that people up for that ask later. Yeah, you get them feeling very good when the actors come that’s really interesting. All right, we’re going to go out for ah, quick break. And we may end up dividing this into two two conversations since we got a little short and i you know, i had an extra question for you, but we’ll get through. Well, well, great. Certainly. Nobody’s going to be short changed on non-profit radio. It just is not going to wait. All right, we got to go away for a few minutes, stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m rob mitchell, ceo of atlas, of giving. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I like the drama in rob mitchell’s voice. Thank you. Rub some more live listen, love quick woodbridge, new jersey i love all the new jersey sabat fort lee woodbridge let’s go abroad croatia sorry, we can’t see your city. I have a friend who works for unicef in croatia, ireland, turkey and vietnam. Vietnam we can see you cities kanto and hoochie minh city live listener love out to each of you. Okay, let’s, continue thinking about r a campaign of appreciation, something that we’re always emphasizing together because you make me pay attention to it is you’re going to have to do this in the channels where your donors and volunteers are not in the channel where you would prefer to be thanking them exactly. And i think i think part of that is, um, uh, struggle and an opportunity so there’s the, you know, if we see just use antennas an example, if we see people are tweeting about their local tech club and they’re an organizer, so they’re, you know, big volunteer for us, we wantto jump right into twitter and start engaging with them and thanking them and pointing people to them and, you know, doing whatever, but then we also want to find ways where we leave that channel to make something private just for them. I think there is that thank you and recognition that’s public. Um but for example, last week, everybody on staff sat together and just passed cards and everybody wrote thank you cards and signed everybody else’s thank you cards and mailed those out to aa group of what we call community champions, you know, really, really great volunteers for us. And it didn’t take that long, but everybody physically wrote, you know, out that card and we never mail things to tech. You know, we don’t ever male things were a technology organization. So when those folks received the cards at the end of last week, we started getting emails were like, oh, my gosh, you mean, how did you even have my address? You mailed me a card. This is so cool. Thank you for thinking of me. So i thought fingers that in the moment go into the same channel. That person is and thank them and engage with them. But then find something that can be special. That’s just between you and that donorsearch or that volunteer or whatever that makes them feel extra special. Excellent. Excellent. Videos are very common. As as an appreciation method. You could do them and mass, and you could do them, maybe even individually. Which i think i think what most difficulty when we think about video is one of the most often pointed two examples of how to do a thank you to your donors that i see in block post every year is charity water and how they, you know, record all these different videos so that, you know, if i donated, i opened up my email oh, my gosh, here’s a video where someone is saying, you know, hi, amy, thank you for donating, and i’m like, oh, my gosh, they made this just for me, we, you know, most non-profits do not have the staff capacity to do that, or if we’re going to be really honest, maybe don’t necessarily feel like they have the technical skills to create lots of videos and added them and feel like they know howto get them up quickly on youtube and embed them in an e mail and send them out, you know? So i think that video khun b really personal, but i really think organizations should consider video something that can be personal because they’re being really authentic and they’re being their individual selves versus you’ve created separate videos for every single donor that makes sense. I mean, i think it’s a non opportunity for staff, whether it’s executive director, other staff to just not feel like it has to be a high production video that it’s really just me sitting at my desk, if you, you know, you sitting in the studio creating a quick, very authentic video that says thank you, and you can share that either an email or, you know, share that video on twitter, whatever that is. But i think it’s better that it’s, that it’s really authentic as it’s created versus feeling obligated to create, you know, tons of videos just so that it has people’s names in it doesn’t make sense for sure, because you’re saying that something that’s authentic, genuine, heartfelt will will come across and people are people don’t really expect to have a personalized video made for organization that can do that, you know, that is terrific, but the vast majority cannot, but everybody could be genuine, you know? I mean, i try to come across genuine on a mic and in video, and a ceo can do the same thing, and and you’re right, and staff to you you have examples of each of those thie all right, the ceo of girls inc has a very nice, very thoughtful video judy reading berg and it’s just her sitting in an office and it’s like a minute and a half video and she’s very genuine. Yeah, i actually i’ve i’ve talked to a lot of people at, you know, at our conference or other conferences where, you know, they say i’m the executive director, you know, i know that if i’m going to be in a video, of course it needs to be, you know, like in a nice setting or, you know, we don’t have a very pretty building, you know? We don’t have, you know, our offices and very nice i don’t know where that comes from that feeling that, you know, you’re the executive director and you’re going to create a video for the organisation. It has to be in some, like, beautiful, you know, sound studio. I love it when it’s literally your desk like i would if i was working with girls inc and judy has hurt you. I would say put more messiness on that desk, mate, make it literally your desk. You know, people. Maybe she’s, super neat and tidy, which i also am. I have currently two things on my death, but but maybe that’s really her desk, but just haven’t be an invitation to come in and sit down with you. You know, i think that’s, um, that’s a really great and super easy way for any organization tohave a video feel like it’s being personal, you know, you’re just inviting them into the space. Of course, if it’s on office, where you’ve got all kinds of things in there, that can be a video. I mean, of course, there’s going to be, you know, exceptions to that statement, but i do think just invite them into your office have, you know, make it feel like someone sitting down with you have someone literally in the video sitting down with you, whatever you can do to just make it feel like you’ve been brought in, you know, personally, we just have about a minute left there’s an example of a different one from nature conservancy, which is a whole bunch of staff from all over the world, and a lot of it starts with them each saying thanks to you and then whatever it is their job is and how, how the donors all support their work, whether it’s underwater, you know, forest and grassland that’s a lovely one, too, thanks to you, yeah, i love that example video from the nature. Well, we can we’ll send out these links and everything for listeners on dh i love that they use is an opportunity to highlight what staff do because with an organisation like the nature conservancy, often times you don’t even know. I mean, i want to support the nature conservancy, but i don’t know i’m supporting them because i don’t even know how to do that work. I don’t even know what you would do, you know? And so i think, it’s a great way to highlight this is actually what our organization does. These were the kind of staff that we employ to do this important work, because again, if you’re goingto follow-up later with another, ask donation request, people now have that understanding of oh my gosh, yeah, you do need more funds because this is the scale of the work. These are the kinds of people that, you know, need to be on the ground doing this. And i want to support that. We have to leave it there. Any sample ward ceo of inten, you’ll find her at amy, sample, war dot or ge, and also at amy, r s ward on twitter. Thanks very much, amy. Yeah, thanks for letting me talk about appreciation. I appreciate you so much, tony. Oh, amy, oh, my god, that’s. Incredible, thank you. I’m grateful. I’m so grateful that you contribute month after month. Thank you. More gratitude live. Listen, love check, but the podcast pleasantries in the affiliate affections i got a lump them together because sam is telling me i’m running out of time. You know i appreciate your listening, whether it’s an am fm station or in the time shift from your own device in your own time, my pleasantries and my affections to you next week. I’ve never let you down. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we be spelling dot com. Our creative producer is clear myer off sam liebowitz is that line producer keeping me on schedule. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and our music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and degree. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of offline as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for June 19, 2015: Smart Donor Engagement & The Right Database

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Opportunity Collaboration: This working meeting on poverty reduction is unlike any other event you have attended. No plenary speeches, no panels, no PowerPoints. I was there last year and I’m going this year. It will ruin you for every other conference! October 11-16, Ixtapa, Mexico.

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Rich DietzSmart Donor Engagement

Compare what you’re doing with takeaways from Abila‘s study of how donors want to be engaged and how nonprofits engage them. Some methods are on target; others miss. Rich Dietz is Abila’s director of fundraising strategy.

 

 

Michelle ChaplinThe Right Database

What are the steps to select the right database for your organization? Michelle Chaplin is senior manager of online fundraising at PBS. We talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference hosted by NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, we have a grand to affiliate. Welcome katie artie ninety five point seven fm davis, california while non-profit radio was on the road past two and a half weeks, i stopped by davis. I’m a program director. Jeff executive director autumn i toured the studio and i thank you very much for hosting me. Jeff in autumn and this is the california announcement that i’ve been teasing you about, and there will be another california affiliate coming but for today. Welcome, katie. Artie davis so very glad you’re with us, our newest affiliate. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of encephalomyelitis ridiculous if i had to think about the mere idea of you missing today’s show smart donorsearch gauge mint compare what you’re doing with takeaways from a bill, a study of how donors want to be engaged and how non-profits actually engaged them. Some methods are on target. Others miss rich dietz isabella’s, director of fund-raising strategy also the right database. What are the steps to select the right database for your organization michelle chaplain is senior manager of online fund-raising at pbs, we talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, hosted by intend the non-profit technology network on tony’s take two, a tribute to rochelle shoretz responsive by opportunity collaboration, that working meeting that unconference on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. I’m very glad to welcome rich dietz he’s, director of fund-raising strategy at abila he began his non-profit career as director of a youth mentoring program in college. For twenty years, he’s been working in and with a wide variety of non-profit political and government organizations, as well as tech companies, focused on the nonprofit sector. The company is at abila dot com, and he is at rich deets on twitter. Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot, tony. Glad to hear you’re. I’m very glad that you are. Where you calling from college? You’re in austin. All right. Austin is awesome. We just had and to see their non-profit technology conference where you were you there? I was definitely there. It was right in our backyard and actually found it harder to go to the conference when it was in my own backyard than when traveling, decide to drive in every day in austin traffic with us a month. I’m so yeah, i’m sorry. We didn’t meet there, though, but i met a bilich there, but i didn’t see you personally, but next year, you’re going to be there. You think in twenty sixteen? Most definitely okay. That’s san jose, i believe, isn’t it? Yes. I’m very excited because california from california originally lived in the bay area for quite a few years. I’m very excited that i just spent ah, weekend half moon bay. Beautiful. Yes. Very nice round the coast. Very, very nice community. Okay, rich, this donor engagement study. Why? Why do we need such a study? Well, we we did the study for a couple reasons. One we were looking at the industry and we seen way saw a bunch of other studies out there that talk to donors or maybe talked organizations and was trying to get this whole idea of why donors give you know what? What motivates them to give what makes them feel engaged? And we found that there was a lot of studies that looked at one or the other. But there weren’t studies that looked at both groups as a whole and then compared them to see if there was any differences, overlap, commonalities or actually holes in that and some of our concerns around that was, you know, fifty seven percent of donors each year are leaving organizations, you know, donor attrition, you know, we also see seventy four percent of non-profits admits that they don’t use donordigital to make program decisions on dh, that sort of, you know, concerns us a little bit, so we wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that. So we created the study, the donor engagement study, it was a survey of both donors, a cz well, as non-profit organizations we ask them a number of questions to find out preferences on engagement, so we asked the non-profit how do you think not, you know, donors want to be engaged with, and then we asked the donor’s, how do you actually want to be engaged with and then compared those and found some really interesting commonalities and some very, very interesting differences that attrition rate that you mentioned that we’ve had the other guest mentioned that seventy four, seventy five percent of donors leave an organization. Each year that’s, that’s startling it is startling in striking and and the way i usually tell people how startling it is. Let’s say you had one hundred, donors donate today in five years on ly one of those donors is still donating the organization that should scare you. And that should keep you up at night. Ninety nine percent over five years. Well, no, no, i’m saying it is the year over year, seventy four percent every year you’re leaving? Yes, yes. So after five years on ly one of those hundred still still don’t. Okay, so we could call that ninety nine percent attrition over five years over, but yeah, my gosh, yeah, alright, neverthought about it longer than okay on dh. How did you select the non-profits and donors to survey? We actually went to a research firm called ed research stuff just to make sure that we weren’t biased and how we we don’t want to just select our clients or just not our client. So we went to aa research company called research on and they did it all using, you know, the highest statistical standards. Ninety five percent plus confidence all of that fancy. Stuff that i don’t understand everything about. But, you know, i i leave that for smarter people, okay? Confidence intervals. I remember those confident from college statistics, like if you had ninety six percent confidence that’s, actually not very good, as i recall from i don’t know what i’m saying if no, no, i didn’t mean if this study had ninety six percent. I mean, in general, if one has ninety six percent confidence, as i recall from college statistics that’s not even very high, you want to be like ninety eight or ninety nine percent? I’m not imputing the abila study way haven’t gotten into yet there’s nothing to impute. All right, so you have some excellent takeaways, which we want to leave listeners with remember our our audience is small and midsize non-profits and they are certainly struggling with that kind of attrition, and we’re interested in the the commonalities, but also the misalignments in the disconnects between what donors are saying they would like or believe they’ve got and what non-profits believe they are doing or believe they ought to do so that that’s where we want to, we want to focus on these your your your first takeaway is that basics and fundamentals are very, very important most definitely in this is this was one of just one of the findings i was very excited about because i’ve been preaching the fundamentals and getting back to the basics for many, many years, as i’ve been consulting and teaching and training across the way, in fact, i have a master’s in social work, so i’m a social worker by trade and something we learnt about social work school is mathos hierarchy of needs, which which i’m sure most people on the caller are very familiar with and massive marchenese says, you know, you have to have your basic needs met before you can move up into higher level things, you have to have food and water before you even care about friendship or, you know, confidence or or anything like that. And when i found working with non-profits is it was very similar in that they need to focus on the basics first and then move up the ladder there and see what i mean by that is you need to focus on your website, email marketing your donor process. You know how you move a donor? From an email all the way through the donation process, actually becoming a donor, and you need to focus on that first before you get into things like peer-to-peer fund-raising and social media and and all of that stuff on so we found in the study is going back and really focusing on those fundamentals and what do we mean by those fundamentals? The number one thing is thinking through that donor flow, thinking through what it is like to be a donor to go through your entire process of a fundraising campaign, and that is from that email they receive to the length they click on to the page, they land on to the donation form and and all the way through the thank you. And then, of course, the follow-up follow-up is so is so important. And so the way we’ve been trying to talking about now, instead of thinking of a holistic donorsearch experience where we’re calling it a holistic donorsearch donor experience because you not only need to think about the entire process, but also the actual individual that is going through that process, i’m going to get much deeper into this when we get into the segmentation, but thinking about who’s doing it is it a major donor is in a major donor who likes polar bears, and that gives you a very different process that you may want to do than a fifty dollar donor-centric frogs it, and we’ll get much more into that as well as a cz we go through another really important thing on the on the fundamentals is showing impact you’ve probably heard other people talk about how important it is to show impact and that the work that you’re doing is meaningful and making a difference will in our survey, we found that the number one thing donors wanted to know about was is the money being used wisely? They also wanted to know if their support is making a difference was another top three concern of theirs on dso. By showing the impact you can do that, the best way to show that impact, of course, is stories story is going to be the best way to show that impact on and that’s again going back to the basics, really crafting some beautiful stories and if you can bring in that visual storytelling on dh, what we mean? By that is, using video using pictures to really tell a great story. Okay, which study done by cloudgood yes, i wanted to point out that the going back a little bit you your premise was that people started that pipeline through an email, but they’re actually maybe multiple ways. They may have found you first on one of the social networks, or they may have found you first through hearing about you from a friend. So even just that entry into the pipeline is going to vary across people. Definitely definitely andi and channel preference is something that would be talking about some of the later findings as well. But that’s that’s, a great point is actually tailoring how they found you in that messaging and in those stories and how you communicate with them is also very important. Yes, okay, thanks, rich. We need to take a break on when we come back. Of course, you and i’ll keep talking about a billa’s donorsearch exgagement study. Stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. What are the latest travel trains? How khun travel. Be a part of your overall health and wellness plans. This’s william paris, lifestyle travel consultant and your host foreign travel and wellness today. Join me on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time. For travel chat, travel tips and travel news. Update that’s on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time on talk radio dot n y c. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future. You dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight. Three backs to one to seven to one eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping huntress people be better business people. Talking dot com. Hyre welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I can’t send live listener love, spy city and state today because we’re pre recorded by a day it’s a it’s a day before the live show. But of course, live listener love to each person who is, in fact listening live podcast pleasantries so there’s over ten thousand listening and the time shift, wherever it is, whatever device, whatever you’re doing, maybe washing dishes. That was the latest i’ve heard podcast pleasantries to everybody in the park in the podcast and listening that way and our affiliate affections love our affiliates, those am and fm and online stations throughout the country, whatever day, whatever time they they play it and their schedule affections to all our affiliate listeners. And, of course, katy art being our newest affiliate in davis. Richard you from davis or davis area, by any chance you said you said i am not out from from her down the beach, california, down south. But i lived in san francisco for about seven years, okay? Yeah, you did mention bay area. Okay. All right. So moving on, we have we have some disconnect, but between donors and non-profits around frequency of communication. Yeah, and this was one of more controversial aspects of the study. We had a couple people come up to this on this, we actually had somebody accused of malpractice, quote unquote, talking about communication frequency and think they read it slightly wrong, so what we found is non-profit professionals were ten times more likely than donors to feel that they were not communicating enough, so the organization’s felt they should be communicating more donors were saying, you’re doing it just about right? So there’s a disconnect there so some folks thought were saying, don’t communicate as much. Don’t email as much don’t do as many facebook post and that’s, not really what we’re saying, what we’re saying is actually bringing in the next key finding with this one is critical content is more important than frequency or channel, so what we’re saying is it’s not how much you communicate it, how you’re communicating, one is communicating with really good content, so that is giving them the stories the thank you’s showing the impact, the accomplishments that you’ve made that’s, the content that they want, that’s, the content that they don’t mind if. You email mohr of it. The other thing is to customize your content, you’re now non-profits are now being compared to amazon and zappos and these for-profit who are really customizing and tailoring their content and donors air at home going well, if amazon knows that i like books about weaving, why can’t my non-profit know what i’m interested in about the organization wanted? They know that i’m interested in the girls after school program, how come they can’t taylor that content? So we’re saying better content and a little more taylor to the organs to the individual donor, you have some findings on different channels that donors would like to see frequency manage differently on? Yes, definitely, and that was some of the interesting fundez while there was some surprises in there and some things that we have come to expect as any particular ones you’re interested in tony yeah, well, let’s start with email. What, what, what, what? What donors feel about the email channel? What i found about email, what i was actually very happy to see and something i’ve been preaching for a while is that email is actually pretty solid across all groups, andi also way also had at abila we also slice the, uh, the the data by generation, so we slice it out by millennials, gen xers, boomers and matures on, and we found something like email was actually solid across all of those generations, in fact, that matures, which air, you know, sixty five over sixty nine percent of them said that email was a fine way to communicate with them. So when people say that the older folks aren’t on e mail or they don’t like getting their email, we’re definitely seeing a shift change there. Yeah, i don’t agree with that matures or olders how boomers boomers matures don’t like email. I think in a lot of cases you would have the individual would have given their email address to the to the organization. So you’re you’re expressing your preference for that channel that way. Ok. What about direct mail? Us paper mail? What? Your findings on that? Yeah. There’s. Actually. Interesting finding on that. And i definitely want to dig deeper. But we found that, of course. You know, you would expect boomers and matures. About eighty percent of them are saying direct mail’s fine. Ah, funny. That was a little surprising as millennials, eighty four percent of them said direct mail’s fine and my my running theory right now, i don’t have any evidence to back this up yet, but that millennials aren’t getting a lot of mail, so getting something in the mail is kind of a cool thing to them, you know, maybe direct mail might work with millennials. Okay, it’s gonna be something that we looked at a little deeper. I see why you were chuckling when when i ask you about that. All right? They’re not getting enough. Those j crew catalogues on the american apparel catalogs. Just not sufficient. Exactly. Okay, um, all right? Interesting. And then all right, so then, sort of related to that is that people do want content that they believe that that is relevant to them most definitely most definitely, and it really gets into the segmentation. Yes. Okay. And we’re going, we’re going to get teo. We’re gonna get the segmentation. Well, i guess we could, you know, means it doesn’t have to be in the sequence that you and i have been thinking about since we’ve teased it a couple times. Now what? What do we know about segmentation well, other than it’s not really being done quite as well as it ought to be. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And i think if if if you talk to non-profits their pride pretty honest about this in fact, fifty two percent of non-profits felt like they really weren’t using, you know, segmentation as well as they could, and we found surprising. Well, not surprisingly, fifty two percent of donors felt like organizations weren’t taking their preferences into account. And so when i talk about segmentation, that’s what i’m really talking about his donor preferences, how can you build an experience that the donor feels that you have taken their preferences in account that you have taken their interests into account? Remember, like i said earlier, you are being non-profit are being compared to amazon and zappos and all of that now, so they’re getting highly segmented in some of their emails and some of their communications that they’re getting on, and they’re not being segmented and talked to in a very specific way from the non-profits so we really need to do a better job at that that when we found his most non-profits felt that they were using donation amounts as a source of segmentation, but it really dropped off drastically when we started looking at other ways to teo segment. And so what i’d like to suggest to my non-profits is to start with donation amount because, you know, you’re already doing that and then try to add in one or two more other data point, andi, you know, a really easy one to do would be interested. Um, what are they interested in? What have they shown any sort of interest in and a lot of non-profits have this data already on hand, and they might not even know about it. You can go to your email marketing software and look at what links did they click on that they click on a link for the girls after school program? Then they’re probably interested in women’s issues, girls issues, or maybe they even have girls, you know, did they click on red eyed tree frog? And they did click on polar bears so you can actually pull out some of that interest data. So they’re telling you in many ways, on dh, then you can segment further down from there, okay, so we we’ve talked. About age and interest communications channels. What else? Ah well, we mentioned giving him out that’s that’s very standards. That seems very, very standard method of segmenting what else? What else can you recommend? Another interesting one to think about his location on? And i think this one is particularly good for national organisations, organisations that are that are fund-raising or doing things across the country. And the best example that i’ve seen of this in recent years has been the obama campaign. During the last obama campaign, there was a window. There was a new york times reporter. I believe they did it interesting study where he went, and he signed up for all the candidates emails, but he signed up from different parts of the country. And so for the obama campaign, when he signed up in portland, oregon, he got very different emails than when he signed up in south carolina. Portland, oregon. He got emails about forestry, about labor issues down in south carolina. He got very different communications, so just buy the location that somebody’s ass that they signed up for. You can actually start segmenting based on that and making educated guesses on what? Their interest might be, and then you look to your email statistics that they continue to click on those things that you think they’re interested in. Then yes, they are. If not, then you, then you can try something else. Signing up from portland, i would add, thai food should be added to that interest because i had i had the most delicious thing in cycles are really big in portland. Oh, are they? I didn’t see that, but i didn’t see i didn’t see any use cyclists miss that, but i had the most delicious us thai food that i’ve had since i’ve been to thailand and i live in new york city and supposedly we have good restaurants here. But, uh, i have to shout since you mentioned portland pock pocket pook, pook, best thai food i’ve had. It was in portland best us tie i’ve ever had, so i would add thai food to the forestry to the forestry interests in portland. Okay, yeah. What? What about agent? Which, if we don’t have a gin our database wait, how do we get out that that that that is an interest one and that one’s going to be a little bit of a challenge? But i have some ideas that i think might might help broke down, so it is an important one, and we really do want to highlight the age since we did look at this data and we did, you know, at abila we slice it up into the different age groups, you know, millennials gen xers matures, baby what’s up, we found that only three percent of non-profits said that they’re really looking at age on a frequent basis in order to segment, and we saw, as you saw in the channel preference and all that there are some big differences in there. So when you’re looking at age, i think there’s some ways you can get this data, some of this data non-profits may already have if a non-profit has done a walk or a ride or a run or any sort of event like that, they probably asked for a gin order to put them into their age brackets and so that can help get that data right there. Look at any of your past registration on and see if you have that that age data on do you know it could already be there? The other thing is to do a donorsearch on and there’s a lot of good reasons to do. It donorsearch not just for ages, but to actually get into your preferences. I say all the time that you know, when we talk about best practices, a best practice is really just a starting point. You still need to test it and try it out within the organization because you might have very different donorsearch mints than what we’re talking about here. And so by doing a donorsearch way, you can dig deeper into what their bread, you can ask them their channels reference, you can have them. You know how they want to be communicated with how frequently they want to be, commute whatever you want to do in there now. The big problem is surveys of getting people to turn them in. You’ve got to come up with some incentives for them to turn in those surveys, you know you can obviously, give away some chock keys, a t shirt or a bumper sticker or, you know, a discount to your gala, something like that. But in a new idea that i’m seeing a few started to experiment with now is doing some sort of matching grants or matching gift with service. So get of one of your major donors to say anyone who turns in the donorsearch ve i’m going to donate one dollars, two to the organization and letting the donor’s know why you’re asking for this data. The reason you’re asking for the data is so you can communicate with them in the way that they want to be communicated with, you know, letting them know that you know, that they’re overwhelmed with emails and overwhelmed with with direct mail and all that stuff, and you only want to be sending him the communications that they actually wanted, that would be their incentive for filling it out as well. I love that donor dahna contribution match for ah, for each survey we have a donor who will donate a certain dollar amount. That’s outstanding that’s it that’s it gets a cool idea. Haven’t heard that. Excellent. Excellent. Um all right, well, any other, any other suggestion about getting at age for an organization that doesn’t have it? It’s not well, we can. We can move on anything else you got? Yeah, you know that. I mean that i think something is going to develop over over the next six to ten months if any listeners out there come up with some good ideas, please send him in, send amar away because i’m looking for new things to test and try on defy could find new ones. I will let you know as well. Okay. And i’ll remind listeners ah, that you are at rich dietz d i e t z at ridge detail on twitter um, okay, let’s, let’s, move, move on then some other takeaways people love giving right makes them feel very good. It actually makes them feel very good on. And this is one of the interesting ones is the number one way that they felt engaged and connected to an organization was through the act of giving. Volunteering came in a fairly close second on attending events, and doing things like that really had started fell off dramatically. From there people people felt like attending an event wasn’t as engaging as, you know, volunteering or actually donate and on the surface you’re like, okay, that is totally obvious, right? But there’s a couple of key points, you’re one, i try to use this to help non-profits feel more comfortable and asking for money people want to donate, and when they do, they feel really, really good, so you’re actually helping people to feel good, so you’re doing a service for them, you’re not taking their money, you’re giving them good feelings is the way i like to tell us, why not? Provoc dahna very good, very good love that. Okay on you have now there’s a difference among millennials? The number one and two are swapped. Yes, it is, and that was really interesting for us. So millennials number one is volunteering and number two is donating and what’s interesting is this aligns really well with some other research and other discussions i’ve had with folks that air that air looking at millennials is millennials have a very different process, one on how they evaluate an organization and how they engaged with an organization. What they’ll do is they’ll go teo and organizations social. Media profiles to learn a little bit more about them they want to see that you’re really people, they want to see that you’re human. If you have the same sort of corporate speak that you have on your website, they’re they’re they’re probably gone. They’re not even going to engage with me any longer, but if they like what you’re saying on social media, then they’re going to come in and volunteer. If the volunteering goes well, then they will make that donation decision, so it is a very different way on dh really, organizations should be looking at getting millennials volunteering well before they even asked them for for a money which which makes sense if you think about it, our wonder of millennials are telling us that they have they have more money than the rest of us, and their time is scarcer, which would well, i don’t mind their time being scarcer, but if they have more money than the rest of us that’s annoying the hell out of me, that’s what they’re saying way have just like a minute and a half before we have teo to wrap up so let’s uh, let’s just flush. Out a little bit more. We’ve already very touched on this a fair amount, but the differences in engagement around age and generation. Yeah, so that you know what i would recommend for folks to a download the study. And they could do that at abila dot com a b o l a dot com forward slash donorsearch gauge mint study on dh there they conceal the charts and dig deeper into the data. But we did find those very interesting differences and, you know, like i said, you know, you’ve got to take everything like this, aziz, a starting point on, and then you need to test it and try it within your own organisation. Weii brought up a lot of the ones earlier about direct mail and all that. But another one i found really interesting on the differences was on, uh, gifts where’s that i’m looking at my date right here. Rich, we have two that’s. Okay, we have to wrap it up. But you’ve told people where the where the study is and if they want more through, they could get you on twitter at rich dietz which, thank you very, very much. Thank you so much. All right, thanks. My pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Tony steak to and the right database air coming up. First opportunity collaboration. It was a terrific experience. It really kicked us up to the next level. We built out a fund on site, and we have raised two and a half million dollars toward a target first close of five million dollars from delegates at the twenty thirteen collaboration that’s from russ baird, executive director of village capital yusa. There are funders at opportunity, collaboration and the rolls and impact investors, as well as lots of smart people from non-profits opportunity collaboration, a weeklong unconference in x top of mexico for everyone who is working in or around poverty alleviation, lots of people who can help you get your work done. And there’s plenty of free time built in to meet those people, make friends and figure out how you’re able to help each other. I was there last year. I’m going this year. Every session is in a circle. It’s very collaborative. No power points, no plenary speakers. Three hundred fifty people from around the world collaborating. If your work is related to poverty, check it out. Opportunity collaboration, dot net. We had a death in the non-profit radio family. Rochelle shoretz the first guest on non-profit radio to die deshele founded sharks share it, a support network for breast cancer survivors and very sadly, she’s no longer a survivor. It was june first when she died. She was on the august thirty first, two thousand twelve show, and we talked about storytelling and deshele very generously shared her story and story of lots of people that share share. It has helped and worked with my thoughts go out to her family and shark share it and those tens of thousands of women and men that her work has touched. Oh, and i have a tribute video with a link to the show on also the new york times obituaries at tony martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two for friday, nineteenth of june twenty fifth show of twenty fifteen here is the next segment, which is also from well from ntcdinosaur as many have been lately. Excellent stuff from the non-profit technology conference here is the right database. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen were hosted by intend the non-profit technology network in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guest is michelle chaplain, she is senior manager for online fund-raising at pbs and her workshop topic is how to choose the right database for your organization. Deshele welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you thank you for taking time on a busy conference day. Let’s uh, let’s, start with a threshold question how do we know if our existing database needs to be changed? Yeah, absolutely that’s a great question, and i think the first thing is you have to sort of go through the process as if you’re looking to change your database. So first you wantto look att all your current users and what their needs are, what they’re trying to get out of the database and what it is doesn’t do that they wanted to dio, and then you need to bring all of those questions to your current vendor and asked them like, is this something that database really can’t do? Or is this an add on feature that we can pay for? Or is this you know, a custom ization that we can get or do we actually have access to this all along? And we just didn’t realize it. And then you went away like the costs of adding those features to your current database to the cost of switching and implementing a brand new database, which is substantial when you taken implementation, cost training cause and just the time it’s going to take for your staff to learn a new system. How do we filter out when we’re asking these questions in our organization between people just complaining about the database and really having a genuine need that isn’t being fulfilled because lots of people have complaints absolutely way filter out the yeah, the mere complaints on dh sort them out from the woods. Isa really write well and i think it’s really helpful to build requirements document, which is just a family non-technical word for need tohave list and a nice hot list. So you take all of the various rants and complaints and things they want, the database tohave and you divided into things that are real deal breakers like your database is not gonna work. Your users are not going to get what they want without these. Things. And then the nice to have things which, you know, might help you increase adoption. It might make a few people happier, but it’s not going to make or break your database and that’s going to help you kind of narrow down your options. Okay, so people will become more rational if we asked them to categorize between needs and needs and desires. Exactly. Okay, we’re trying to insert some rationality into this whole process, right? Be a lot more strategic and sophisticated. Okay. So then, if we have our we have our requirements document, uh, most vendors are going to be willing to review this with us. Yeah. And generally, when you ask a vendor to present there their database or their system to you, they probably have, like, a put together power point presentation. And i would say, just send them your requirements. Ask them point blank, like, does your system me all of these requirements? If not, then they don’t need to waste their time presenting or your time, you know, giving you this presentation. And when they present to you, ask them tio just do open up a kn example of their database and go through the steps that you, your users, will go through. So you can see what your user experience is. Rather than just getting kind of their standard sales pitch. That’ll save you both a lot of time. Let’s. Take a step backward when you’re talking to your existing provider. How do you sort of position it so that they don’t feel like they’re being threatened, not threatened, but so that they don’t just become defensive and you know, but you, you know, you didn’t identify that is a need years ago, we didn’t understand that that was a requirement of yours, you know, he’s trying to cut through that stuff and just can we get our can we get our needs met, right? Yeah, and i think it’s it’s a matter of, you know, acknowledging the fact that this process you’re going through is a process that you’ve just started and you’re looking at a database and you’re looking what people didn’t need to get out of it, and you’re asking them, like, is this something i could do with the database? You know, because this is a new, like me that has come up or this is a new requirement that we’ve identified that’s goingto be necessary in the future and, you know, most vendors will work very hard and if it’s at all possible to keep your business going your way, you’re asking exactly and understand, and, you know, if they can’t do it, then it’s sort of, you know, it’s self explanatory, why? Why you need to move on? And i think they understand that, like most vendors aren’t going to throw a fit over, you know, you making a reasonable, logical choice that this isn’t the right fit free. Okay, okay, um, so let’s, let’s jump back to dark metoo new potential vendors, are you ah, fan of r f piece for this process or some people are, and some people think they’re overblown and don’t really accomplish very much. I’m i’m a fan of a super simple r f k and what i do is my request for proposal are here my requirements? This is my requirements document the list of need tohave nice toe have stuff. And if your database could do all of my need to have in some of my nice to have that i want to hear from you, okay before exactly pretty simple or yes, compared to many that we’ve all seen exactly. Yeah, because most vendors, they already have their standard product. They’re not going to take the timeto, you know, answer. Accustom are for every single line. Okay, that’s, the that’s, the other side of one of one of the other disadvantages is you’re going not here from a lot of potential vendors who just won’t spend the time answering a lengthy are exactly okay. All right, so what’s, our next step? Well, how do we proceed in this in this process? Yes. So once you kind of have your short list of vendors and you’ve seen their presentation, then you really want to dig in and evaluate those, you know, top three or four vendors. Teo really ascertain whether or not they meet your needs and if if they all meet your needs. Like what nice tohave requirements do they also meat that will help you further narrow your list down. Andi, i for this part, i recommend, like, actually doing trials of everything. And if a vendor won’t let you try out their product and go in and mess around, i would be a little bit wary of that, because then you’re like buying. You know, you’re buying a car without giving it a test drive. So what do you migrate? Just a part of your database into the into each platform that you want to test. Yeah, you can just create some sample data. Are a lot of databases ifyou’re doing their trial portion? They even would come with sample data so you can just play around with the way it exists and just go through a few of your processes, you know, there doesn’t have to be, you know, huge reports generated or anything useful, it’s just you need to be able to see if your users were going to be able to get what they need to get out of it. All right? Dahna no, please, no more. Oh, so then after that, you can just sort of rate the different the different options based on your criteria. So your needs to have obviously, if they don’t meet any of the needs to have that’s a deal breaker, you can stop right there, throw him out and take him off your list. They wasted your time because you’re you asked him that originally exactly hyre they more points they lose right for squandering time? Alright, who’s involved in this process from the organization now that we’re out to the outside potential vendors. So i mean, i think there needs to be like a point person or a project manager who’s doing the implementation. And really, that depends, like, if it’s a small organisation, it could be just somebody with the title of project manager or executive assistant or you, you know, it might be the ceo doing all of this by themselves and then buy-in bigger organizations, they probably have, like, a database implementation manager or an administrator who’s in charge of all the databases who can kind of oversee. So it depends on the size of the organization, but really, one person should take ownership of it, and then they can lease and manage all the relationships with the key decision makers like the cfo, the ceo were actually, you know, signing the checks and then all of the different types of users, the power users who are going in and, you know, stretching the database to its limits every day, the people who maybe, like volunteers using it every so often and then all of the managers and and other people of the organizations who may not ever use the database but need information from it. So, like, your finance officers might need financial reports out of your database, but they don’t actually go in and generate the reports, so we need to talk to them. Tio, do you think the board has a role here or not? Really, i think it really depends on the board and the scope of the project that you’re working on. So if it’s a large like, if it’s your like a financial management database and the board, you know, is looking at the finances of recorder, hopefully and is generating the reports that i think including them in, you know what they want to see in terms of those reports and make making sure that the database meets their needs in that respect on dh then on the other hand, if they’re key decision makers in terms of this, this could be a very large purchase, and they’re, you know, key decision makers in terms of purchase decisions, then you need to be able to show them like this is the best option for organization and why and having that, having that documentation of like this so these air need tohave nice to have criteria and how every single option rates and you’ll get sort of like a clear picture of this is the winner and it’s something that’s easy for them to. Digest and easy for you to sell that yes on dh in large part because you’re showing that you’ve done your due diligence when you can document the process that you’ve been through. Exactly. Okay, thank you for that aggression we were at the stage where we’re testing, we’ve got we’ve got sample data yet, and we’re testing a few alternatives exactly, and then it’s just about going down your requirements document and checking off like every every process you go through everything that it khun dio, you know, all the little nice to have stuff that you’re users may want, but it’s not necessary and, you know, grading those and using those two just rate, you’re different options and again, that’s going to give you a clear winner in fact, there’s a really cool excel spreadsheet, which allows you to do like waiting of your different options, and you’re different criteria, and it gives you a new miracle score for each of the vendors. So you can say whoever has the highest score wins and has the advantage of waiting, so everything is not equal. Exactly because in reality, it’s not all right, what’s our next step now we’ve we’ve selected one, i presume we have a stage where we’ve we’ve chosen one, the chosen one, you’ve hopefully chosen wisely and everyone’s on board because you can straight that you did your own work and and then it’s time to make a plan like this isn’t the end really it’s the beginning of what goes in our plan? S o i like transition plan exactly the implementation plan on dh. I like to start with kind of the end date. So when we want all the users to be able teo, log onto the database and use it that’s the kind of what i start with, and then i work backwards from that until they get to today. So maybe, you know, three to four weeks before the end will be, like the soft launch where our power your users can go in and play with stuff and look at it and maybe, like a month or two before we’ll do that data migration on dh, you know, you just map it out and going backwards until you have today. We’re it’s like that. Everything you have to do right now. Okay. Okay. Let’s. Spend a little time on migration, because that could be very, very messy. We should expect a lot of support from the new vendor in migrating data. So that’s going to be something that you have to consider in your requirements document is how much support do you need to migrate your data? Do you have a lot of in house expertise or you’re going to need full support? And is this new database something that you know your i t team are your in house database experts can figure out and migrate your data into. Or is it a proprietary software that the vendor has to do themselves so that’s definitely something you want to consider while you’re looking at different vendors, what your need is in that respect, another option would be hiring a third party or an external consultant to come and look at your current data, clean up your database and migrated over for you. Yeah, this could be an opportunity to clean up your data. Exactly. Okay, up. Maybe you can include cleanup in the migration support that you get from the from the new vendor. Absolutely. Build that in. Yeah. I mean, just like every time you move your house. You kind of clean out your closet. Every time you migrate your data, you want to think about cleaning it up. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m rob mitchell, ceo of atlas, of giving. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Oppcoll we need to be very specific. I would think about what’s going to be included in the in the implementation plan that it be in the contract with the new vendor. Yes, absolutely. And most vendors will build that in usually it’s in like a number of hours that they’ll offer in certain packages to work on dahna migration on training, on support on dh, they’re all you know, most vendors will negotiate that with you depending on your organization’s needs. Okay, what’s, our next step now we we’re past the time line. Where are we now? We’ll hopefully you do everything on time, right? If your implementation over schedule, of course it doesn’t. But it’s a it’s an aspiration exactly off the goal. We’re talking in hypotheticals waken weakened dream. But even if not, you know and plan for that in your timeline to, like plan for what happens if everything falls apart and we don’t launch, you know the database on october first if we do it november first. Like how much of a catastrophe is that? What about december first? You know if it’s a cr m and you’re doing your in giving do you really want? Your database to launch on december first so, you know, planning for contingencies like that. But once you’ve gone through the timeline, once you’ve migrated your data over, you’ve gotten your staff trained on it, you know, your users air doing it, you’re getting good user adoption and really including them in the entire process, asking them what they want is going to be a big help to you and getting user adoption. Then you know it’s about just maintaining your database and keeping the support going and keeping your users engaged in using it and making sure it’s still doing what you’re doing is there much of a difference? And you’re free to tell me that it’s obviously the way whether the new vendor train’s just the power users like train the trainers, or whether they should be training all the users does that matter? I think, and and then the trainers would train the lower level users, right? Your internal trainer, i think there’s something to be said with training the trainers. You just want to make sure that you have enough to support your kind of lower level users so they can all get training quickly and also, one of one of your trainers leaves. Do you have another trainer? Do you have a program for keeping that knowledge and house, or will the vendor continue to train people on an ad hoc basis afterwards? So, you know, it’s, just the benefits and risks of having some stuff done in house versus everything done by the vendor, okay? And then, of course, ongoing support critical. Well, it really depends on again your in house expertise and how complicated the databases that i always think of smaller and mid size non-profit because that’s, what our audience is right, they they’re they’re less likely, and certainly they could, but less likely that they’ll have a lot of in house expertise around. Yeah, third base administration and day to day issues. So support is important. Yes, definitely. We still have a couple minutes left. What do you want to share that i haven’t asked you about? Goodness? Or more detail on something immediately, even if we talked about it. But any more detail? Yeah, i mean, i think one thing that we didn’t really have a chance to go into in depth is the idea of hiring a consultant to do all this with you, especially if you are a small organization or even a medium sized organization. You might not have a staff person with the time to do all of this research and, you know, talked all the vendors and go through all the trial periods, and you know, the advantages if you do it with the consultant, you have them come in, they assess all your needs one time, you know, they talked to all your respective users bundle that they already have a really good knowledge of all the different you know, database is out there and how they would fit so they’ll know which vendors to go to, which are the best options, probably in the first in the first place, and be able to pull it in and it’s assess it so you can kind of skip over the decision making their research part and go right into your short list. Where? You know you work with a consultant, teo, analyze the, you know, the top three best fits and they can make, like, a spreadsheet and analyze it and make it so you can, you know, defend it to your board and show that, like there’s, you know, research and due diligence was done on that, you know, it’s more expensive, but it’s off your plate and it’s off your staff’s plate. You could also be value in the consultant evaluating the state of your data. Someone objective who’s not likely to say. Oh, well, you know, there’s this problem in the data, but yeah, we figured out how to work around that. So it’s not a big deal when really, it is a big deal because you have faulty data. You’ve just developed a workaround. Exactly. Yeah, and then they can also come up with strategies for cleaning the data or people you may cos you may want to engage to help you clean your dad up. So it works for you the way you needed tio what’s been the pbs experience. Have have you done database change? We actually went through thiss process about a year ago. We were looking at changing our email marketing system and way kind of went through the first update our needs assessment talked to all the users, went back to our vendor, and they actually made a lot of changes in custom is asians to our existing system so it would meet our needs and, you know, and now there are just a really strong partner, and they’re consistently checking in with us to make sure that databases still meeting their needs. So it it is it really, you know, we didn’t end up changing databases, which saved me a lot of headache personally, and it gave us, like a really strong relationship with our current vendor. Have you had your session yet? No it’s tomorrow at three, ok? Because i was going to ask if you heard of any disaster stories that do you know of any migrations that went badly? Conversions went badly. We know of so many so many. I mean it’s. One of the reasons that i proposed this session is because migrations often happen too fast without enough thought and they end up just blowing up in people’s faces nobody’s happy with the end result and they end up, you know, a year later, after hobbling along with their new database, either switching back-up watching something different into a completely s o i am looking forward to hearing a lot of horse stories tomorrow you expect you expect to hear a good bit, but we could do this all much more strategically and smartly if we have this plan and process that we just talked about? Absolutely. And avoid the heart. Avoid being the next horror story of ntc twenty sixteen. Exactly. All right. Thank you very much. Michelle. Thank you. Michelle chapman, chaplain. Pardon me. Michelle chaplain is senior manager for online fund-raising at pbs. And this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference. Twenty fifteen. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks to everybody at antenna non-profit technology network loved being at ntc this year. Next week get your emails delivered and did you know that there’s a job called emailed deliver ability specialist also the open movement. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com opportunity collaboration. The world convenes for poverty alleviation. That outstanding unconference that’ll ruin you for every other. Conference opportunity collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Janice taylor is today’s line producer shows. Social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.